presented  to  the 
LIRRAKY 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  •  SAN  DIKGO 

by 

FRIENDS  OF  THE  LIURARY 


MR.    JOHN  C.   ROSE 

donor 


Digitized  by  tine  Internet  Arcliive 

in  2007  witli  funding  from 

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littp://www.arcliive.org/details/dearoldstorytellOOadamiala 


HOMEIJ. 
{After  painting  by  Fran{Ois  Gerard.) 


DEAR  OLD  STORY-TELLERS 


BV 

OSCAR    FAY   ADAMS 

Author  of  "  Post-Laureate  Idyls,"  and  Editor  of  "  Through  the 
Year  with  the  Poets,"  "  Chapters  from  Jane  Austen,"  etc. 


TWELVE  PORTRAITS 


BOSTON 
D    LOTHROP    COMPANY 

WASHINGTON    STREET   OPPOSITE    BROMFIELD 


Copyright,  1889, 

BY 

D.  LoTHROP  Company. 


iSitSB  of 

BfriDtcfe  &  Smitlj, 

iSoBton. 


To 

EDWIN 

Brother  belovid,  on  that  grave  of  thine 

I  lay  this  wreath  of  blossoms,  blotvn  too  late. 

Forgive  their  scanty  fragrance  and  divine 
His  love  who  brings  them  is  not  bound  by  date. 


\ 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER  I. 
homer:  tales  and  romances  ....  Q 

CHAPTER    li. 

the   ARABIAN    NIGHTS 26 

CHAPTER    HI. 
MSOP M 

CHAPTER    IV. 

MOTHER  GOOSE ec 

CHAPTER   V. 

CHARLES   PERRAULT       y^ 

CHAPTER   VT. 

THE   BROTHERS  GRIMM gO 


CONTENTS. 
CHAPTER   VII. 

LA   FONTAINK,  THE  GOOD       . 


io8 


CHAPTER   VIII. 

EDOUARD    RENE    LEFKBRE    LABOULAYE  .  .  I25 

CHAPTER   IX. 

HANS   CHRISTIAN   ANDERSEN  ....  143 

CHAPTER   X. 

DAVID    DEFOE  


164 


CHAPTER    XL 

I,A    MOTTE   FOUQUE,   THE   VALIANT        .  .  •  I?^ 

CHAPTER   XII. 

THE   AWTHOR  OF   "PAUL  AND   VIRGINIA."    .  .  I93 


DEAR   OLD 
STORY-TELLERS 


CHAPTER   I. 

HOMER  :     TALES   AND    ROMANCES. 

HISTORY  and  fiction  have  always  been 
unequal  rivals  for  favor,  and  where  ten 
men  will  read  history  with  sincere  interest,  a 
hundred  will  turn  from  history  to  fiction  with 
relief. 

The  more  closely  history  adheres  to  facts,  the 
less  the  general  reader  cares  for  it.  The  histor- 
ical narratives  that  have  been  most  widely  pop- 
ular have  been  those  of  a  legendary  character. 
The  more  unreal,  the  more  romantic  the  history, 
the  greater  its  hold  upon  the  average  reader. 
9 


lO  HOMER:     TALES    AND    ROMANCES. 

An  inability  to  separate  the  false  from  the  true, 
the  romance  from  the  fact,  is  characteristic  of 
the  early  chronicles  of  all  nations.  The  lively 
imagination  of  ruder  peoples  in  early  times  has 
always  invested  nearly  everything  with  which 
they  had  to  do  with  a  veil  of  romance.  Their 
religious  rites,  their  daily  tasks,  their  pleasures 
and  their  pains  became  mixed  with  this  element 
of  the  unreal.  Beside  the  gods  and  goddesses 
in  whom  they  believed  and  whose  bodily  appear- 
ance on  earth  might  be  expected  at  any  moment, 
all  nature  was  by  their  imagination  peopled  with 
myriad  forms,  more  or  less  human  in  their  attri- 
butes, and  more  or  less  —  but  usually  less  — 
kindly  disposed  towards  mankind.  A  firm  belief 
in  these  existences  made  a  love  for  the  mar- 
velous an  universal  thing.  No  hero  arose  but 
that  half-miraculous  powers  were  ascribed  to  him. 
It  was  not  enough  that  he  must  be  victorious 
over  his  fellovvmen,  he  must  have  slain  giants, 
have  vanquished  dragons  or  conquered  his  ene- 
mies by  summoning  to  his  aid  the  mysterious 


HOMER. 
(Bust  in  British  Museum,  LondoH  ) 


HOMER  :     TALES    AND    ROMANCES.  13 

powers  of  earth  and  air.  Homer,  the  greatest  of 
the  ancient  story-tellers,  when  relating  the  his- 
tory of  the  siege  of  Troy  or  recounting  the 
wanderings  of  Ulysses,  heightened  the  interest 
of  his  narrations  by  interweaving  into  his  ac- 
counts of  the  prowess  of  his  heroes  tales  of  the 
interposition  of  the  gods  in  their  behalf  and  of 
their  continual  and  intimate  relations  with  su- 
pernal powers.  And  all  the  romancers  from 
Homer  down  have  depended  more  or  less  upon 
the  supernatural  or  unreal  to  deepen  the  fasci- 
nation of  their  tales.  In  such  ways  the  ac- 
count of  the  life  of  any  early  hero  has  become 
so  mixed  with  the  marvelous  and  the  impossible 
that  the  very  fact  of  his  existence  is  often  ren- 
dered a  matter  of  doubt. 

With  the  coming  of  Christianity  many  pagan 
myths  became  merged  into  half-comprehended 
Christian  ceremonies  and  beliefs,  and  pagan 
tales  and  legends  of  the  saints  were  sometimes 
strangely  blended.  In  all,  however,  the  element 
of  romance,  of  the  fantastic,  of  the  unreal,  is 


14  HOMER:     TALES   AND    ROMANCES. 

Stronger  than  anything  else ;  because  the  liking 
for  the  romantic  is  one  of  the  strongest  of  human 
emotions.  The  highest  civilization  refines  this 
liking,  it  reduces  its  power  somewhat,  but  it  does 
not  extinguish  it. 

The  Norseman  delighted  in  stories  of  Thor 
and  Odin  and  their  exploits  in  the  days  of  his 
paganism;  and  when  a  dim  and  doubtful  Chris- 
tianity came  with  Olaf,  he  transferred  to  Christian 
heroes  many  of  the  attributes  of  his  pagan  gods. 
The  history  of  the  Norsemen  is  a  confused  jum- 
ble of  Thor  and  Odin,  the  marvelous  deeds  of 
yellow-haired  sea-kings  and  their  stormy  loves 
and  hates,  and  when  the  land  grew  quieter  in 
the  lapse  of  centuries  the  tales  of  these  rest-; 
less  days,  so  full  of  the  romantic  and  marvelous, 
never  lost,  nor  have  they  yet,  their  power  to 
charm.  Mr.  William  Morris  writes  in  our  day 
such  poems  of  Norse  loves  and  hatreds  as  "  The 
Lovers  of  Gudrun  "  and  "  Sigurd,  the  Volsung," 
and  the  world  reads  them  with  delight. 

The  Welshman  was  as  romantic  as  his  Norse 


HOMER. 
(.Bust  in  National  Museum,  Naples) 


X 


homer:   tales  and  romances.  17 

kinsman  ;  and  in  the  Mabinogion  and  other  col- 
lections of  tales  he  has  left  us  a  fantastic  mixture 
of  Pagan  and  Christian  romance.  Of  some  of 
these  Welsh  heroes  we  read  in  Tennyson's  Idyls 
of  the  King. 

Many  of  the  Irish  and  Highland  legends  have 
a  common  source  and  are  quite  as  wildly  romantic 
as  the  Norse  or  Welsh  stories.  One  of  the  most 
beautiful  of  the  Irish  legends  is  told  in  verse  in 
Dr.  Joyce's  Deirdre ;  and  in  Miss  Katharine  Ty- 
nan's Shamrocks  the  story  of  Diarmuid  is  finely 
given.  Diarmuid,  whose  story  is  related  by  both 
Irish  and  Highland  bards,  seems  to  have  been 
a  sort  of  Adonis  and  Paris  combined,  and  like 
Adonis  was  killed  by  a  boar.  This  legend,  com- 
mon to  both  nations,  could  no  doubt  be  traced  to 
the  same  source  as  the  classical  story  of  Adonis. 

A  general  likeness  exists  between  the  roman- 
ces of  European  nations,  and  archaeologists  have 
traced  a  great  number  of  them  back  to  Asiatic 
or  Egyptian  sources.  Some  of  our  most  familiar 
nursery  tales  appear  in  various  forms  in  the  ro- 


i8  homer:  tales  and  romances. 

mantic  literature  of  many  nations,  varied  in  each 
case  to  accord  with  national  peculiarities.  The 
story  of  Cinderella,  for  example,  is  given  in 
French,  Italian,  Arabian  and  Egyptian  versions 
and  is  known  even  among  some  tribes  of  North 
American  Indians.  The  Egyptian  as  being  the 
earliest,  may  probably  claim  to  be  the  original. 
It  is  as  follows:  In  the  year  670  b.  c.  the  beauti- 
ful Princess  Rhodope  was  bathing  in  the  river 
and  had  left  her  garments  on  the  river's  brink. 
The  glitter  of  her  jeweled  shoes  attracted  an 
eagle  hovering  in  the  air  above  her  who,  swoop- 
ing down,  caught  up  one  of  the  shoes  in  his  beak 
and  bore  it  away.  Passing  over  Memphis  in  his 
flight  the  shoe  dropped  from  his  beak  into  the 
lap  of  King  Psammetichus  who  was  then  hold- 
ing a  court  of  justice.  Tlie  king,  much  at- 
tracted by  the  dainty  iieauty  of  the  shoe,  sent 
forth  a  royal  edict  requesting  the  owner  to  apply 
for  it  in  person.  As  days  went  by  and  no  appli- 
cant appeared  messengers  were  at  length  sent 
out  who  in  process  of  time  found  the  Princess 


homer:   tales  and  romances.  19 

Rhodope  still  mourning  for  her  lost  shoe.  She 
was  soon  after  brought  before  the  king  who 
married  her.  In  the  Italian  version,  still  occa- 
sionally acted  at  carnivals,  the  outline  of  the  story 
as  just  narrated  is  presented,  Italian  personages 
being  substituted  for  Egyptian.  The  French 
version  places  the  scene  in  quite  humble  life, 
as  we  shall  see  if  we  read  the  fairy  tales  of 
Charles  Perrault  of  whom  we  shall  hear  further 
on.  Ih  "The  Story  of  Rhodope,"  one  of  the 
tales  ih  Mr.  William  Morris's  Earthly  Paradise, 
the  adventure  is  again  told,  though  one  not 
familiar  with  the  Egyptian  version  might  not 
perhaps  recognize  the  well-known  tale  of  Cin- 
derella. The  theft  of  the  shoe  is  thus  related 
by  Mr.  Morris : 

"  There,  as  she  played,  she  heard  a  bird's  harsh  cry, 
And  looking  to  the  steep  hillside  could  see 
A  broad-winged  eagle  hovering  anigh, 
And  stood  to  watch  his  sweeping  flight  and  free, 
Dark  'gainst  the  sky,  then  turned  round  leisurely 
Unto  the  bank,  and  saw  a  bright  red  ray 
Shoot  from  a  great  gem  on  the  sea-thieves'  prey. 


■20  HOMER  :    TALES   AND    ROMANCES. 

"  Then  slowly  through  the  water  did  she  move, 
Down  on  the  changing  ripple  gazing  still, 
As  loath  to  leave  it,  and  once  more  above 
Her  golden  head  rang  out  the  erne's  note  shrill, 
Grown  nigher  now ;  she  turned  unto  the  hill. 
And  saw  him  not,  and  once  again  her  eyes 
Fell  on  the  strange  shoes'  jeweled  'broideries. 

"  And  even  therewithal  a  noise  of  wings 
Flapping,  and  close  at  hand  —  again  the  cry, 
And  then  the  glitter  of  those  dainty  things 
Was  gone,  as  a  great  mass  fell  suddenly, 
And  rose  again,  ere  Rhodope  could  try 
To  raise  her  voice,  for  now  she  might  behold 
Within  his  claws  the  gleam  of  gems  and  gold.  . 

"  Awhile  she  gazed  at  him  as,  circling  wide, 
,  He  soared  aloft,  and  for  a  space  could  see 
The  gold  shoe  glitter,  till  the  rock-crowned  side 
Of  the  great  mountain  hid  him  presently, 
And  she  'gan  laugh  that  such  a  thing  should  be 
So  wrought  of  fate,  for  little  did  she  fear 
The  lack  of  their  poor  wealth,  or  pinching  cheer." 

If  we  look  at  the  stories  of  later  date  than 
these  which  had  their  origin  in  the  remoter  past 
we  shall  find  the  more  unreal  the  story  is,  the 
more  romantic,  as  we  say,  the  greater  number 
of  people  it  interests  and  the  stronger  its  hold 


HOMER:    TALES    AND    ROMANCES.  21 

upon  popular  favor.  People  like  to  get  away 
for  a  time  from  the  every-day  atmosphere  that 
surrounds  their  lives.  The  easiest  way  to  do 
this  is  by  reading  or  listening  to  some  romance 
which  is  not  closely  hemmed  in  by  the  facts  of 
familiar  existence.  As  for  children  the  fairy 
tale  or  book  of  adventure  is  the  passport  to 
happiness,  so  for  their  elders  the  romance  serves 
more  or  less  effectually  the  same  purpose. 
When  we  read  Burns's  Tarn  O' Shunter  we  have 
left  the  land  of  the  actual  for  that  of  the  ideal ; 
a  rather  grim  ideal  to  be  sure,  but  still  an  ideal. 
Rip  Van  Winkle  takes  us  to  the  same  ideal 
country,  so  does  Hiawatha,  so  do  The  Idyls  of 
the  King. 

At  the  close  of  the  last  century  when  the  ro- 
mantic novel  had  become  so  absurdly  romantic 
as  to  create  a  sort  of  rebound  from  its  influence 
in  the  public  taste,  well-meaning  writers  like 
Miss  Edgeworth  and  Thomas  Day,  undertook 
to  provide  a  literature  for  young  people  which 
should  deal  with  facts  and  have  nothins:  to  do 


22  HOMER  :    TALES    AND    ROMANCES. 

with  romance.  So  Mr.  Day  wrote  Sandford  and 
Merton,  a  book  which  no  healthy  child  ever  reads 
without  yawning  over  it,  and  Miss  Edgeworth 
and  others  wrote  stories  which  showed  quite  as 
little  recognition  of  the  craving  for  romance  so 
strong  in  childish  hearts.  Certain  American 
authors  have  made  the  same  mistake  and  have 
produced  books  which  have  ignored  this,  within 
certain  limits,  healthy  craving  in  young  minds. 
It  is  guidance,  not  repression,  that  the  romantic 
instinct  needs.  Sometimes  the  ideal  assumes 
the  guise  of  the  practical,  as  in  Robinson  Crusoe 
and  Swiss  Family  Robinson,  but  in  spite  of  the 
matter-of-fact  style  of  these  tales  they  are  in 
conception  essentially  romantic,  and  it  is  this 
that  has  given  them  their  world-wide  fame. 

Every  age  and  every  nation  has  its  favorite 
romances,  some  of  which  retain  their  hold  on 
readers  but  a  little  while,  comparatively  speak- 
ing, while  others  are  enjoyed  by  generation  after 
generation.  In  the  Middle  Ages  the  story  of 
Reynard  the  Fox  was  more  popular  in  Europe 


HOMER  :     TALES   AND    ROMANCES.  23 

than  that  of  King  Arthur  and  the  Round  Table. 
The  origin  of  the  tale  seems  to  have  been  Flem- 
ish and  the  date  about  1150.  It  soon  became 
the  common  property  of  the  Teutonic  nations, 
and  an  English  version  of  it  was  printed  by  Cax- 
ton  in  1 49 1. 

The  stories  of  the  Arabian  Nights'  Entertain- 
ments, as  we  shall  have  occasion  to  notice  later, 
did  not  long  remain  the  property  of  one  people, 
and  the  Fables  of  ^sop,  which  are  romances 
in  condensed  form,  have  been  the  heritage  of 
many  centuries  and  of  almost  all  nations. 

Within  the  present  century  the  greater  facili- 
ties for  travel  and  for  the  distribution  of  litera- 
ture have  made  what  was  once  the  operation  of 
centuries  an  affair  of  but  a  few  months  or  years 
—  the  world-wide  dissemination  of  a  popular 
romance.  It  has  brought  to  Western  readers 
some  of  the  numberless  romances  of  India,  of 
China,  and  of  Japan,  and  has  carried  to  Oriental 
nations  a  few  of  the  modern  tales  that  Western 
romancers  have  told.     Now  that  the  romances 


24  homer:   tales  and  romances. 

of  all  nations  stand  on  the  same  shelf  as  those  of 
our  own  English  tongue  it  is  not  such  a  simple 
thing  to  be  familiar  with  them  all,  nor  need  we 
attempt  it.  Those  we  like  we  shall  read  and 
re-read  and  merely  glance  at  the  others.  How 
long  the  popular  romances  of  our  time  will  con- 
tinue to  give  pleasure  no  one  can  tell. 

For  over  a  hundred  and  fifty  years  Robinson 
CrusoehsLS  never  lacked  an  army  of  young  readers 
and  that  army  is  ever  increasing  in  numbers. 
The  stories  told  by  the  Brothers  Grimm,  and  the 
Hans  Andersen  tales,  are  read  by  a  greater  num- 
ber every  year. 

Will  it  be  thus  with  Kingsley's  Wafer  Babies? 
with  Hawthorne's  Wonder  Book?  with  Lewis 
Carroll's  Alice  in  Wonderland?  or  with  George 
MacDonald's  At  the  Back  of  the  North  Wind? 

Time  only  can  decide. 

Judging  by  the  steadily  growing  popularity 
of  such  books  as  these  it  would  seem  as  if  they 
might  remain  enduring  favorites,  yet  the  taste 
of  one  generation  not  unfrequently  rejects  what 


HOMER  :    TALES   AND   ROMANCES.  25 

its  predecessor  pronounced  good.  What  books 
will  be  forgotten  in  a  few  decades  and  what 
books  will  remain  perennially  fresh  for  centuries 
is  beyond  the  power  of  the  keenest  critic  to 
foresee. 

This  much,  however,  can  be  safely  said :  Until 
human  nature  becomes  a  widely  different  thing 
from  what  it  now  is  romances  will  be  written  and 
will  be  read.  The  heroes  and  heroines  of  the 
stories  which  are  dear  to  us  may  pass  utterly 
from  men's  memories,  the  tales  which  many 
readers  have  agreed  to  consider  deathless  may 
be  forgotten ;  but  there  will  then  arise  new 
heroes  and  heroines  of  romance  who  will  wield 
as  potent  a  sway  over  the  imaginations  of  people 
in  future  ages  as  do  these  of  our  day.  Gener- 
ations may  vanish  like  shadows  in  a  glass  but 
the  love  for  romance  will  endure. 

"  Last  night  a  mighty  poet  passed  away : 

'  Who  now  will  sing  our  songs  ? '  men  cried  at  mom. 

Faint  hearts,  fear  not !     Somewhere,  though  far  away, 
At  that  same  hour  another  bard  was  born." 


CHAPTER  II. 

THE   ARABIAN    NIGHTS. 

"  When  the  breeze  of  a  jo3rful  dawn  blew  free 

In  the  silken  sail  of  infancy, 
The  tide  of  time  flow'd  back  with  me, 

The  forward-flowing  tide  of  time; 
And  many  a  sheeny  summer  morn, 
Adown  the  Tigris  I  was  borne, 

By  Bagdat's  shrines  of  fretted  gold. 

High-walled  gardens  green  and  old. 
True  Mussulman  was  I  and  sworn. 

For  it  was  in  the  golden  prime 
Of  good  Haroun  Alraschid." 

A  CHILDHOOD  that  had  never  known  the 
Arabian  Nights,  that  had  heard  not  of 
"good  Haroun  Alraschid,"  which  was  never 
lighted  by  the  rays  from  the  wonderful  lamp  of 
Aladdin,  and  to  which  the  adventures  of  Sind- 
bad  were  unfamiliar,  would  be  a  strangely  in- 
26 


THE   ARABIAN    NIGHTS.  2J 

complete  one,  or  so,  at  least,  it  would  seem  to 
us  now. 

Yet  to  the  English-speaking  world  these  de- 
lightful Arabic  tales  have  not  been  generally 
known  till  within  the  last  hundred  years.  Car- 
maralzaman  and  Badoura,  Zobeide  and  the  three 
calenders,  Noureddin  AH  and  Bedreddin  Has- 
san are  as  familiar  names  to  us  as  those  of 
Crusoe  and  Friday ;  but  while  our  great-great- 
grandparents  in  their  childhood  knew,  and  proba- 
bly heartily  detested,  Sandford  and  Merton,  of 
Ali  BaHa  and  the  Forty  Thieves  they  probably 
never  so  much  as  dreamed. 

The  passionate  love  of  marvelous  stones  so 
strongly  characteristic  of  Oriental  peoples  is  not 
wholly  easy  for  us  to  fully  appreciate,  fond  as 
we  Western  folk  are  of  fiction.  To  the  Oriental 
the  story-teller  is  journalist,  novelist,  dramatist 
and  teacher  in  one.  In  the  coffee-houses  of 
Cairo,  the  tent  of  the  Bedouin,  or  in  the  palaces 
of  Bagdad,  the  professional  story-teller  is  always 
welcomed. 


28  THE  ARABIAN   NIGHTS. 

"  In  mosque  and  square  and  gay  bazaar  " 

the  teller  of  stories  can  always  find  eager  and 
attentive  listeners.  The  love  for  wonderful 
tales  is  common  to  all  ranks  and  it  is  in  perfect 
keeping  with  Eastern  nature  that  Shahriyar  the 
king  of  Samarcand  should  be  as  well  entertained 
by  the  marvelous  stories  narrated  by  Schehera- 
zade as  any  slave  in  his  palace  would  have  been. 
To  the  few  students  of  Oriental  languages 
two  centuries  ago  many  of  the  tales  now  in- 
cluded in  what  we  usually  call  The  Arabian 
Nights  were  more  or  less  familiar ;  but  a  trans- 
lation of  a  number  of  them  into  French  by  M. 
Galland,  in  1704,  first  brought  them  to  the  gen- 
eral notice  of  Western  readers.  A  translation 
of  M.  Galland's  collection  into  English  was 
afterwards  made,  and,  although  it  was  felt  by 
scholars  to  be  imperfect  as  well  as  inaccurate, 
it  became  extremely  popular.  English  transla- 
tions from  the  Arabic  were  made  from  time  to 
time,*  the  best  of  which  was  that  by  Edward 

•  Foster,  1802;  Beaumont,  1810;  Scott,  181 1 ;  Lambe,  1826. 


THE   ARABIAN    NIGHTS.  29 

William  Lane  in  1839.  In  this  work  the  trans- 
lator has  aimed  to  represent  the  original  as 
faithfully  as  possible  and  to  give  a  truthful 
and  entertaining  picture  of  Arabic  customs  and 
manners. 

M.  Galland's  version  is  never  dull,  but  it  con- 
tains almost  as  much  of  the  translator  as  of  its 
Arabic  original,  while  Mr.  Lane's  translation  in 
addition  to  being  entertaining  has  the  merit  of 
being  much  nearer  to  the  original. 

About  the  origin  of  the  Arabian  Nights'  En- 
tertainmaits  a  great  deal  of  controversy  has  been 
raised ;  but  with  this  we  need  not  concern  our- 
selves. That  they  are  of  comparatively  modern 
date  may,  however,  be  looked  upon  as  settled, 
as  well  as  the  fact  of  their  Arabic  authorship. 

Coffee,  tobacco  and  fire-arms  not  being  men- 
tioned in  the  Tales,  it  has  been  argued  that  they 
were  written  before  these  came  into  general  use, 
and  Mr.  Lane  places  the  year  1530  as  an  ap- 
proximate date  :  Haroun  Alraschid,  the  centre 
of  so  many  of  the  Tales,  was  contemporary  with 


30  THE   ARABIAN    NIGHTS. 

Charlemagne,  and  with  him  Arabic  magnificence 
seems  to  have  reached  its  highest  point.  But 
the  best  authorities  consider  the  stories  to  have 
been  written  at  a  considerably  later  period  than 
the  time  of  Haroun. 

About  the  year  1300  a  Sultan  of  Egypt  issued 
an  order  compelling  all  Christians  to  wear  blue 
turbans,  and  all  the  Jews  yellow  turbans,  instead 
of  white  which  the  Moslems  wore.  In  the  tale 
called  "The  History  of  the  Young  King  of  the 
Black  Isles"  his  people  are  transformed  into 
fishes,  yellow,  red,  white  and  blue.  The  red 
were  the  fire-worshipers,  the  white,  Moslems, 
the  blue.  Christians,  and  the  yellow,  Jews ;  and 
from  this  it  has  been  argued  that  the  date  of 
this  tale  at  least  must  be  subsequent  to  the  be- 
ginning of  the  fourteenth  century. 

The  interest  of  the  tales  themselves  is  very 
little  affected  by  the  question  when  they  were 
written ;  but  as  pictures  of  Eastern  life  their 
historical  value  is  of  course  largely  dependent 
upon  the  date  of   their  composition.     Judging 


dUUJIj  .lyliJl  sl^.  J^_JLll  ^^  JUL.  ij^L  J^ 
^^  J-^  "V**:?  yKri  e;!  *J'^  i:^  V4iJ  ^^^  (3i;dj 

-^  v;jK>  ^;»  ^^  ^^  j^  «aU!  !l4)  JLi  J^j 


-=4&=— 


A    PAGE    OF    ARABIC. 

{Facsimile  of  the  opening  of  tlie  story  of  Evis  El-Djelis,  ' '  The  His- 
tory of  the  Beautiful  Persian"  from  "  The  Aralrian  Nights") 


THE   ARABIAN    NIGHTS.  33 

from  many  of  the  details  in  the  stories  they 
seem  to  have  beeri  written  in  Cairo,  and  doubt- 
less a  large  number  of  them  had  been  related 
by  Eastern  story-tellers  to  eager  listeners  in 
palace-court  and  street-bazaar  long  before  they 
were  put  into  writing.  Some  of  them  show  a 
Hindoo  origin,  and  others  are  distinctively  Per- 
sian ;  but  all  seem  to  have  been  remodeled  to 
suit  the  tastes  and  customs  of  the  Arabs  who 
lived  in  cities. 

Whether  one  or  more  persons  were  concerned 
in  their  composition  and  remodeling  is  some- 
thing that  cannot  be  accurately  known,  but  quite 
probably  they  are  the  work  of  one  person,  as 
some  excellent  critics  have  supposed.  With 
one  exception  no  similar  collection  of  Arabic 
tales  is  known  to  exist,  but  in  Europe  during 
the  Middle  Ages,  collections  of  stories  by  one 
author  were  very  common.  Chaucer's  Canter- 
bury Tales  is  one  of  the  most  noted  of  these,  and 
Boccaccio's  Decameron  another. 

As  a  picture  of  the  times  in  which  they  were 


34  THE    ARABIAN    NIGHTS. 

written  they  are,  of  course,  historically  valuable, 
but  they  form  no  part  of  serious  Arabic  litera- 
ture. They  correspond  in  some  measure  to  the 
lighter  novels  of  our  day ;  not  the  novels  which 
stir  our  deepest  feelings,  but  those  which  aim 
simply  to  amuse.  That  is  all  the  Arabian 
Nights*  Entertainments  aim  to  do.  They  are 
animated,  ingenious  and  amusing,  but  they  are 
nothing  more. 

Compare  Homer  with  these  Arabic  tales.  In 
Homer  our  imagination  is  kindled  by  the  ac- 
counts of  the  heroes  of  whom  he  sings ;  in  the 
Arabian  Nights  our  interest  is  excited  by  the  ad- 
ventures that  happened  to  certain  people  about 
whom  personally  we  care  very  little.  In  Homer 
it  is  what  Achilles,  Hector,  Paris  and  the  others 
really  were  in  themselves  that  we  care  for.  Char- 
acter moves  us  in  the  Grecian  narrative,  advent- 
ure in  the  Arabic.  Popular  as  these  tales  have 
been  among  the  Arabic  peoples  they  have  never 
occupied  a  high  position  in  Arabic  literature 
both  by  reason  of  their  literary  style,  which  is 


THE    ARABIAN    NIGHTS.  35 

far  from  being  the  best,  and  because  of  their 
general  frivolousness.  The  scholarly  Arab 
would  probably  think  it  a  sinful  waste  of  time 
to  read  them  through  and  would  resent  having 
Arabic  literature  judged  by  such  specimens  of 
it  as  these, 

I  have  not  carelessly  called  the  tales  frivo- 
lous. They  are  so  because  they  have  little  or 
nothing  to  say  concerning  the  realities  of  life. 
They  are  sparkling,  but  they  touch  the  surface 
of  things  only.  The  fancy  is  aroused,  but  the 
feelings  are  seldom  touched.  The  mind  of  the 
Oriental  is  not  a  sympathetic  mind.  To  accounts 
of  the  most  cruel  tortures  the  Arab  listens  with 
indifference,  and  he  can  inflict  suffering  without 
a  moment's  hesitation.  The  greatest  misfortune 
he  can  conceive  of  is  the  loss  of  money  or  ma- 
terial comforts,  and  the  interest  of  the  greater 
number  of  Arabic  stories  turns  upon  the  lack  or 
the  possession  of  riches  and  what  they  can  bring. 
No  moral  lesson  is  drawn  from  events  as  they 
occur,  either  directly  or  indirectly,  simply  be- 


36  THE   ARABIAN    NIGHTS. 

cause  the  author  does  not  dream  of  such  things 
as  moral  consequences.  Vice  never  seems  very 
black  to  him,  nor  goodness  especially  com- 
mendable in  itself ;  and  of  the  development  and 
upward  growth  of  human  character  he  has  no 
conception. 

To  the  English-speaking  world  life  means 
much  more  than  the  pursuit  of  our  own  individ- 
ual happiness ;  it  implies  a  deep  sense  of  our 
personal  accountability  for  its  proper  use.  Pleas- 
ure is  the  chief  object  of  living  to  the  Oriental, 
and  he  is  indifferent  as  to  whether  his  end  is 
attained  worthily  or  otherwise. 

We  are  not  to  look  therefore  to  the  Arabian 
Nights  for  any  direct  moral  teaching.  But  there 
is  in  these  tales  an  indirect  moral,  unintended  by 
the  author,  yet  which  is  there  nevertheless.  And 
it  is  this :  The  pursuit  of  happiness  for  purely 
selfish  motives  fails  in  reality  to  bring  it  to  us. 
The  heroes  and  heroines  of  these  sparkling  sto- 
ries are  never  secure  in  their  happiness  for  any 
long  time.     Any  sudden  turn  of  adventure  may 


THE   ARABIAN    NIGHTS.  37 

wrest  it  from  them ;  and  they  have  no  strength 
of  character  to  console  them  for  its  loss,  or  to 
show  them  how  to  rebuild  it  upon  its  true  basis 
—  a  love  for  others  equal  at  least  to  their  love  for 
themselves.  "  It  is  only  a  poor  kind  of  happi- 
ness that  can  come  from  thinking  very  much 
about  ourselves,"  says  George  Eliot  in  Romola, 
but  these  people  of  whom  the  unknown  author 
tells  us  know  no  other  kind.  If  Western  nations 
are  superior  to  Oriental  peoples  it  is  because 
their  ideals  are  higher,  because  their  aims  are 
less  self-centered.  It  is  indeed  true  that  some 
noble  examples  of  self-sacrifice  and  loftiness 
of  motive  are  chronicled  in  the  Arabian  annals; 
they  are  however  not  the  rule,  but  only  excep- 
tions. 

If  we  read  the  Arabian  Nights  for  amusement 
simply,  we  shall  find  it  delightful.  There  are  no 
tales  in  the  world  quite  like  these  in  their  bril- 
liancy of  invention,  gorgeousness  of  description 
or  ingenuity  of  adventure.  They  can  never 
grow  stale  to  young  people  ;  for  the  love  of  the 


38  THE   ARABIAN    NIGHTS. 

marvelous  is  a  natural  and  healthy  love  in  child- 
hood and  youth,  ahd  these  stories  meet  that 
natural  desire  and  in  a  way  that  no  others  can 
do.  Later,  when  a  taste  for  the  adventures  of 
genii  and  magic-workers  fades  away,  the  unde- 
signed moral  of  it  all  will  grow  clear  to  us  and 
we  shall  see  that  character  is  more  than  mate- 
rial delights,  and  that  no  happiness  worthy  of 
the  name  can  be  hoped  for  without  it. 


CHAPTER   III. 


iESOP. 


TEACHING  by  fable  is  the  most  ancient 
method  of  moral  instruction;  and  allu- 
sions to  it  abound  in  the  early  history  of  all  na- 
tions. The  dullest  minds  could  be  reached  by 
an  apologue  or  a  parable,  and  the  brightest  ones 
were  not  offended  by  this  indirect  mode  of  giving 
advice.  Indeed,  the  fable  seems  to  have  been  at 
one  period  the  universal  method  of  appeal  to  the 
reason  or  the  conscience.  Kings  on  their  thrones 
were  addressed  in  fables  by  their  courtiers,  and 
subjects  were  admonished  by  monarchs  by  means 
of  skillfully-told  apologues.  Eastern  peoples  in 
particular  have  delighted  in  them,  both  because 
of  their  natural  love  for  story-telling  and  be- 
cause of  the  opportunity  the  fable  affords  for 

39 


40  iEsop. 

pithy  condensations  of  wisdom.  Unwritten  lit- 
erature is  rich  with  brief,  sententious  and  easily 
remembered  sayings,  and  the  fable  offers  the  best 
method  of  preserving  them.  The  early  fables 
of  a  race  were  never  long,  and  thus  were  readily 
transmitted  by  word  of  mouth  from  one  gener- 
ation to  another. 

India  was  the  birthplace  of  the  fable  in  its 
importance  and  the  greater  part  of  all  Oriental 
apologues  can  be  traced  to  Indian  origin.  In 
fact,  with  one  notable  exception  probably  no  col- 
lection of  fables  has  been  so  widely  circulated 
as  the  one  known  throughout  India  as  the  Am- 
wdri-Sahali,  or  The  Lights  of  Canopus.  Bfdpai 
or  Pi'lpaf,  the  reputed  author,  was  a  Brahmin 
revered  throughout  India  for  his  wisdom,  who 
became  the  adviser  of  the  Indian  prince  Dabs- 
chelim,  a  contemporary  of  Alexander  the  Great. 

Eastern  story-tellers  give  a  very  circumstan- 
tial account  of  the  manner  in  which  Pflpai's  fa- 
bles came  to  be  written.  Dabschelim,  we  are 
told,  greatly  desiring  to  leave  behind  him  some 


.i;si)i'. 
(^A/ter  the  painting  by  Velasquez.) 


JESOP.  43 

literary  monument  of  his  reign  which  should  be 
more  enduring  than  marble  or  brass,  induced 
Pi'lpaf  to  prepare  a  work  for  the  instruction  of 
kings  which  should  illustrate  the  soundest  prin- 
ciples of  wisdom  and  morality  by  amusing  tales 
and  anecdotes. 

The  Brahmin  accordingly  shut  himself  up  in 
his  study,  with  one  of  his  disciples  for  his  aman- 
uensis, and  remained  there  composing  and  dic- 
tating for  an  entire  year.  At  the  end  of  that 
time  the  two  issued  from  their  retreat  and  pre- 
sented the  completed  volume  to  Dabschelim  who 
is  said  to  have  been  quite  overwhelmed  with 
joy  upon  receiving  it. 

About  the  middle  of  the  sixth  century  the 
manuscripts  were  translated  into  Persian,  two 
centuries  later  into  Arabic,  and  again  into  Per- 
sian in  the  twelfth  century.  From  this  last 
translation  was  produced  in  the  fifteenth  cen- 
tury the  standard  Persian  version  from  which 
our  English  translations  have  been  made.  All 
Oriental  scholars  have  united  in  praising  these 


44  iCSOP. 

apologues  which,  as  Sir  William  Jones  asserts, 
"comprise  all  the  wisdom  of  the  Eastern  na- 
tions." The  book  has  appeared  in  twenty  differ- 
ent languages  and  it  is  one  of  the  great  classics 
of  Eastern  nations. 

In  the  Lights  of  Canopus  as  in  the  still  more 
famous  collection  to  which  we  shall  come  pres- 
ently, animals  are  introduced  as  the  medium  of 
conversation ;  the  Indian  fables  however  are 
connected  by  a  slender  thread  of  narrative. 
One  of  the  shortest  fables,  "The  Monkey  and 
the  Carpenter,"  will  serve  as  an  illustration  of 
their  style  : 

"  It  has  been  related  that  a  Monkey  saw  a  Carpenter 
sitting  on  a  plank  and  cutting  it,  and  he  had  two  wedges, 
one  of  which  he  drove  down  into  the  crevice  of  the  board 
so  that  it  might  be  more  easy  to  cut  it  and  the  slip  for 
the  stroke  of  the  saw  might  be  opened.  When  the  crevice 
widened  beyond  a  certain  extent,  he  hammered  in  another 
wedge  and  drew  out  the  former  one  and  in  this  manner 
carried  on  his  work.  The  Monkey  was  delighted.  Sud- 
denly the  Carpenter  in  the  midst  of  labor  on  an  emergency 
rose  up.  The  Monkey,  when  he  saw  the  place  vacant,  at 
once  sat  down  on  the  wood  and  his  tail  slipped  down  into 
the  crevice  of  the  wood  in  that  part  which  had  been  cut. 


iESOP.  45 

The  Monkey  drew  out  from  the  cleft  in  the  wood  the 
foremost  wedge  before  he  hammered  in  the  other  one. 
When  the  wedge  was  drawn  out  both  sides  of  the  board 
sprang  together  and  the  Monkey's  tail  remained  firmly 
fixed  therein.  The  poor  Monkey,  being  ill  with  pain, 
groaned,  saying :  '  It  is  best  that  every  one  in  the  world 
should  mind  his  own  business : 

'  Whoever  does  not  keep  to  his  own  affairs  acts  very 
wrongly. 

'  My  business  is  to  gather  fruit,  not  to  drive  a  saw ; 
and  my  occupation  is  to  disport  myself  in  the  woods,  not 
to  strike  the  hatchet  or  axe. 

'  Whoever  acts  thus,  such  will  befall  him.' 

The  Monkey  was  talking  thus  to  himself  when  the  Car- 
penter returned  and  beat  him  as  he  deserved,  and  the 
affairs  of  the  Monkey  through  his  meddlesomeness  ended 
in  his  ruin.     Hence  it  has  been  said : 

'  Carpentering  is  not  the  business  of  an  ape^  " 

But  far  the  most  noted  collection  of  fables, 
and  the  one  that  has  exercised  the  widest  influ- 
ence, is  of  Greek  origin,  and  generally  attributed 
to  yEsop.  Their  purpose  apparently  was  to  trav- 
esty or  parody  human  affairs,  and  under  the  dis- 
guise of  animals  gifted  with  speech  and  reason 
every  phase  of  human  weakness  or  virtue  was 
briefly  but  effectually  caricatured. 


|»  XSOP. 

Several  eminent  scholars  have  denied  the 
authorship  of  ^sop  to  these  fables  and  have 
claimed  Babrius,  who  is  supposed  to  have  flour- 
ished between  the  times  of  Augustus  and  Alex- 
ander Severus,  as  the  author.  Others  have  as- 
serted them  to  be  the  work  of  Maximus  Planudes, 
a  Byzantine  monk  of  the  fourteenth  century.  The 
famous  Dr.  Bentley  two  hundred  years  ago  wrote 
much  upon  this  topic,  denying  ^sop's  author- 
ship ;  and  from  that  time  to  this  the  question 
has  been  a  disputed  one.  Still  the  weight  of 
authority  inclines  in  favor  of  ^sop,  and  we  may 
without  much  hesitation  consider  ^sop  as  their 
author. 

That  they  are  mainly  the  work  of  one  person 
is  evident  from  their  similarity  of  form.  Each 
relates  but  a  single  incident  and  enforces  but  a 
single  truth.  The  lesson  to  be  learned  is  clear 
and  unmistakable.  It  is  certain  that  if  not  all 
by  one  writer  they  show  in  their  construction  the 
influence  of  a  single  mind  whether  that  mind  was 
<^sop's  or  not ;  and  simple,  short,  direct  fables 


^sop.  47 

are  usually  spoken  of  as  ^sopian  to  distinguish 
them  from  the  long-drawn-out  and  often  mystical 
apologues  of  Oriental  origin. 

The  date  and  place  of  birth  of  ^sop  are  alike 
uncertain.  Cotyaeon,  a  city  of  Phrygia,  is  said 
by  Bachet  de  Mezeriac,  a  French  author  of  the 
seventeenth  century  who  wrote  a  life  of  ^sop, 
to  have  been  his  birthplace,  while  a  writer  of  our 
own  day  makes  him, a  native  of  Mesembria  in 
Thrace,  and  he  is  supposed  to  have  lived  in  the 
sixth  century  before  Christ. 

About  the  personal  appearance  of  ^sop  a 
similar  uncertainty  exists.  The  popular  con- 
ception of  him  is  that  of  a  much  deformed  and 
even  repulsive-appearing  man ;  an  idea  derived 
from  a  life  of  him  attributed  to  the  same  Byzan- 
tine monk,  Planudes,  who  was  said  by  some  to 
have  been  the  author  of  the  fables.  Other 
writers,  however,  have  described  him  differently ; 
and  apparently  the  only  point  of  agreement  in 
the  controversy  is  that  he  possessed  a  dark  com- 
plexion. 


48  .«SOP. 

It  is  also  as  uncertain  as  the  date  and  place  of 
his  birth  and  his  personal  appearance,  whether 
^sop  committed  his  fables  to  manuscript,  or 
whether  they  were  transmitted  through  folk-talk, 
through  story-tellers,  and  through  their  illustra- 
tive use  by  public  speakers  —  the  collection  we 
possess  being  gathered  into  form  some  centuries 
later.  There  are  allusions  to  several  of  the 
fables  in  the  Greek  literature  before  the  Chris- 
tian era,  but  the  earliest  collection  now  known 
bears  the  date  of  the  thirteenth  century  after 
Christ.  Their  brevity,  as  we  have  said,  the 
simple,  definite  action  of  their  drama,  the  witty 
conversation  of  the  few  actors,  the  pointedness 
of  the  lessons  taught,  all  would  tend  to  render 
easy  their  preservation  in  ^sop's  own  words, 
even  through  many  generations.  The  remark- 
able ease  with  which  the  fables  are  committed 
to  memory  by  any  one,  and  the  tenacity  with 
which  they  are  remembered,  certainly  come  from 
a  quality  and  an  art  inherent  in  their  concep- 
tion and  construction.     The  universal  fitting  — 


MSOP. 


49 


the  "  patness  "  so  to  speak  —  of  the  "  moral  "  is 
another  inherent  characteristic  of  the  ^sopian 
fables,  so  distinguishing  and  discriminating  them 
from  the  common  stock  of  fable  fhat  the  number- 
less allusions  to  them  and  their  frequent  use  as 
illustrations  and  enforcements  of  ethical  truth 
have  incorporated  them  permanently  into  the 
great  body  of  general  literature. 

All  writers  about  ^sop  however  agree  that  he 
was  born  a  slave.  We  first  hear  of  him  as  an 
inhabitant  of  the  island  of  Samos  where  his  mas- 
ters were  Xanthus  and  Jadmon.  How  great  their 
rank  we  have  no  means  of  knowing.  All  that  is 
now  remembered  of  them  is  that  they  were  suc- 
cessively the  masters  of  a  slave  named  ^sop. 
Jadmon  recognizing,  doubtless,  the  brilliant  qual- 
ities of  his  bondsman,  made  him  a  freeman  and 
ere  long  the  slave  by  birth  became  the  confidant 
of  kings  and  the  equal  of  philosophers  and  sages. 

In  the  reputed  lifetime  of  ^sop  the  court  of 
Croesus  King  of  Lydia  was  the  most  learned 
then  existing.    To  the  capital  city  of  Sardis  were 


5©  iESOP. 

attracted  many  of  the  wisest  men  of  the  time  and 
among  these  iEsop  might  have  been  found,  hav- 
ing made  his  home  there  from  about  570  b.  c. 
by  the  express  invitation  of  Crcesus. 

In  conversation  with  the  philosophers  whom 
he  met  at  the  Lydian  court  ^sop  seems  to  have 
been  quite  able  to  hold  his  own,  and  Croesus 
appears  to  have  esteemed  his  shrewd  and  often 
humorous  advice  more  highly  than  the  elaborate 
and  lengthy  counsels  of  the  philosophers. 

More  than  once  he  was  sent  by  the  Lydian 
king  on  diplomatic  missions  to  the  various  Gre- 
cian states.  On  one  of  these  occasions  he  was 
at  Athens  during  a  period  of  disaffection  on  the 
part  of  the  citizens  towards  Pisistratus,  their 
ruler,  and  by  his  clever  invention  of  the  fable  of 
"The  Frogs  Desiring  a  King,"  now  one  of  the 
best  known  of  the  fables,  he  restored  harmony 
between  Pisistratus  and  his  subjects.  At  an- 
other time  he  showed  the  Corinthians  the  folly 
of  being  led  by  impulse  in  a  fable  narrating  the 
danger  of  mob-law. 


^sop.  51 

It  was  while  absent  from  Sardis  on  an  impor- 
tant political  mission  that  his  death  is  said  to 
have  occurred.  A  solemn  embassy  had  been 
sent  by  Croesus  to  Delphi,  and  yEsop  was  in- 
structed to  offer  valuable  gifts  at  the  shrine  of 
Apollo  and  to  distribute  to  each  citizen  four  sil- 
ver minae.  During  the  negotiations  in  regard  to 
the  distribution  differences  of  opinion  arose  be- 
tween ^sop  and  the  Delphians  resulting  in  his 
refusal  to  proceed  further  with  the  presentation 
of  the  gifts  in  his  charge,  which  he  therefore  sent 
back  to  Croesus.  The  Delphians,  enraged  be- 
yond measure  at  thus  losing  a  treasure  which  had 
been  almost  in  their  hands,  at  once  determined 
upon  revenge.  In  pursuance  of  this  design  a 
gold  cup  belonging  to  the  temple  was  hidden 
by  them  in  the  baggage  of  ^sop's  attendants, 
and  after  he  had  gone  a  short  distance  from  the 
city  he  was  followed  and  brought  back  on  a 
charge  of  sacrilege. 

To  allay  the  fierceness  of  his  enemies,  ^sop 
related  a  number  of  his  fables,  among  them  that 


52  iESOP. 

of  "  The  Beetle  and  the  Eagle ; "  but  the  Del- 
phians  were  too  wrathfully  disposed  to  be  open 
to  reason,  and  the  embassador  was  condemned 
to  death.  This  cruel  sentence  was  at  once 
carried  into  execution  and  .^sop  was  thrown 
from  a  rocky  precipice  near  Delphi. 

Many  times  in  after  years  must  the  Delphians 
have  repented  of  their  impolitic  haste,  for  a  long 
series  of  calamities  overtook  them  soon  after 
which  did  not  end  till  a  fine  had  been  paid 
to  the  grandson  of  Jadmon,  the  former  owner 
of  ^sop.  This  fine  the  Delphians  voluntarily 
imposed  up>on  themselves  in  acknowledgment 
of  their  crime,  and  from  this  circumstance  arose 
the  phrase  or  proverb  "  ^sop's  blood,"  used  to 
indicate  the  certainty  of  the  punishment  follow- 
ing a  murder. 

What  action  was  taken  by  Croesus  in  the  mat- 
ter has  not  come  down  to  us,  but  his  own  misfor- 
tunes followed  not  long  after,  and  history,  which 
is  silent  as  to  the  avenging  of  ^sop's  wrongs,  is 
voluble  as  to  the  sorrows  of  Croesus. 


^sop.  53 

Two  hundred  years  after  the  embassy  to  Del- 
phi had  ended  so  tragically  the  Athenians  erected 
a  statue  to  -^sop  carved  by  the  skill  of  Lysippus, 
one  of  the  greatest  sculptors  of  the  time.  The 
statue  has  long  since  disappeared  and  the  skill 
of  Lysippus  is  only  a  tradition  in  our  day,  but 
the  name  and  work  of  ^sop  are  household 
words ;  the  brief  tales  of  the  Samian  Slave  have 
not  lost  their  power  to  charm  and  instruct  in  the 
lapse  of  more  than  twenty  centuries. 

With  some  few  noted  exceptions  the  Romans 
produced  no  fables  and  their  literature  boasts 
no  such  collections  of  tales  as  India  and  Greece. 

The  most  noted  mediaeval  fable  or  apologue 
is  the  well-known  History  of  Reynard  the  Fox. 
To  this  work  may  be  traced  the  origin  of  many 
of  the  fables  of  the  Middle  Ages. 

Although  in  modern  times  the  fable  has  formed 
part  of  the  literature  of  all  Western  nations,  it 
has  never  assumed  the  importance  it  possessed 
in  ancient  times,  or  which  it  still  holds  in  the 
estimation  of  Oriental  peoples.     The  fables  of 


-J 

54  iESOP. 

later  authors  are  with  one  noted  exception  read 
mainly  by  scholars.  In  1668  the  first  six  books  of 
the  fables  of  the  great  French  author,  La  Fon- 
taine, were  published,  and  three  years  later  a 
second  collection.  These  fables  have  been  the 
delight  of  successive  generations  for  two  hun- 
dred years,  and  their  popularit}'  remains  as  great 
as  ever.  The  student  reads  them  for  the  charm 
of  their  style,  the  philosopher  for  their  keen  an- 
alyses of  life  and  character,  and  the  schoolboy  for 
the  simple  delight  which  the  story  affords.  Edi- 
tions of  La  Fontaine's  fables  are  almost  innu- 
merable, and  they  will  probably  ever  remain  as 
they  are  now,  the  most  popular  fables  of  the 
Western  world. 


CHAPTER   IV. 


MOTHER   GOOSE. 


NOT  the   French   Contes  de  Fees  or  Contes 
de  Ma  Mere  V  Oye,  but  our  own  American 
Mother  Goose. 

By  rights  she  should  be  called  Grandmother 
Goose,  but  "  of  that,"  as  the  crab  in  the  fairy 
tale  said  after  shaking  off  one  of  his  legs  and 
while  he  was  waiting  for  another  to  grow,  "  of 
that,  more  anon."  "  It  is  difficult  to  imagine  a 
nursery  without  a  Mother  Goose  inhabiting  it, 
but  English  nurseries  know  her  not,  or  at  best 
as  a  visitor  from  America,  not  as  one  who  be- 
longs there.  Yet  the  children  in  the  English 
nursery  know  as  much  about  the  well-merited 
punishment  administered  to  the  piper's  son,  the 
astounding  egotism  of  Jack  Horner,  the  sad  end 


56  MOTHER   GOOSE. 

of  the  Gotham  sages,  the  perfectly  managed 
domestic  economy  of  the  Spratt  household,  the 
unpleasant  companion  of  Miss  Muffet,  the  sin- 
gular adventures  of  Dr.  Foster  of  Gloucester 
and  the  extraordinary  elopement  of  the  dish  and 
spoon  as  do  their  American  cousins.  But  it  is 
one  thing  to  learn  these  delightful  histories  from 
books  called  Nursery  Rhymes,  and  quite  another 
to  have  them  directly  from  the  lips  of  Mother 
Goose  herself,  as  one  may  say ;  and  here  is  where 
American  children  have  the  advantage  of  Eng- 
lish children. 

Mother  Goose  was  not  only  an  American 
woman,  but  a  Bostonian  into  the  bargain.  At 
what  time  the  Goose  family  came  to  America  is 
unknown.  The  name  was  originally  Vertigoose, 
afterwards  changed  to  Vergoose,  and  finally 
shortened  to  Goose.  But  the  first  change  was 
long  before  the  Goose  family  came  to  Boston. 
Boston  was  a  little  village  but  thirty  years  old 
when  we  first  hear  of  them  as  landholders  within 
its  borders.     Nearly  half  the  land  on  Washing- 


MOTHER   GOOSE.  57 

ton  Street  between  West  and  Winter  streets  be- 
longed to  them,  and  so  did  a  large  piece  of  land 
on  Essex,  Rowe  and  Bedford  streets.  At  that 
time  all  that  part  of  Boston  was  open  field  or 
pasture-land,  and  the  Vergoose  family  before 
that  date  probably  lived  in  the  vicinity  of  Han- 
over street  or  Copp's  Hill.  Isaac  Vergoose  him- 
self, the  husband  of  Mother  Goose,  owned  a 
house  and  lot  on  the  land  which  is  now  the 
corner  of  Washington  street  and  Temple 
Place. 

That  the  family  were  wealthy,  for  that  period, 
we  are  assured ;  but  only  one  of  them  achieved 
anything  like  fame,  and  that  was  Mother  Goose 
herself.  But  for  her  the  Vergoose  family  might 
have  lived  and  died  and  been  gathered  to  their 
fathers  in  the  Old  Granary  Burying  Ground 
without  leaving  anything  but  their  tombstones 
to  posterity.  The  cackling  of  a  sacred  goose  in 
the  temple  of  Juno  is  said  to  have  once  saved 
the  Capitol  of  Rome  from  the  Gauls,  and  so  it 
is  that  the  cackling  of  this  venerated  Boston 


58  MOTHER    GOOSE. 

Goose  has  preserved  the  memory  of  this  worthy 
family  to  this  day. 

It  would  be  pleasant  to  know  something  about 
the  childhood  of  Mother  Goose,  but  of  that  we 
are  not  told  in  any  chronicle.  We  do  not  even 
know  where  Elizabeth  Foster  was  born,  in  what 
part  of  Boston  she  dwelt,  or  when  she  married 
Mr.  Vergoose  and  thus  unwittingly  conferred 
everlasting  lustre  upon  his  hitherto  respectable 
but  not  famous  name.  Very  probably  he  thought 
he  was  bestowing  a  great  favor  upon  the  young 
Boston  girl  when  he  asked  her  to  be  his  wife 
and  bear  his  name ;  he  the  scion  of  a  wealthy 
Colonial  family  still  in  friendly  relations  with  its 
somewhat  aristocratic  kin  in  Bristol,  England, 
and  she,  we  are  quite  sure,  descended  from  no 
such  grand  ancestry.  But  we  can  only  imagine 
his  state  of  mind,  for  histor}'  is  as  silent  on  this 
point  as  it  is  on  every  other  connected  with 
Mother  Goose  till  17 15. 

Of  one  thing  however  we  are  sure ;  that  she 
outlived  him  although  the  date  of  his  death  is 


MOTHER   GOOSE.  59 

nowhere  found  in  any  register.  So  we  grope 
our  way  in  the  dark  as  regards  the  maiden  and 
married  life  of  Mother  Goose  till  the  year  17 15 
is  reached.  Then  we  read  in  the  record  of  mar- 
riages in  the  City  Registrar's  office  that  in 
"17 15,  Jwie  8,  was  married  by  Rev.  Cotton 
Mather,   Thomas  Fleet  to  Elizabeth  Goose." 

Of  Elizabeth  we  hear  little  except  that  she 
was  the  eldest  daughter  of  Mother  Goose.  Of 
Thomas  Fleet,  her  husband,  we  hear  much  more. 
He  was  born  in  England  and  was  a  journeyman 
printer  in  Bristol.  It  was  there  that  he  first  knew 
of  the  American  Vergoose  family  through  its  Bris- 
tol relations.  During  the  reign  of  Queen  Anne 
a  certain  clergyman  of  the  English  Church,  Dr. 
Sacheverell,  having  incurred  the  displeasure  of 
the  dominant  political  party  was  tried  for  trea- 
son before  the  House  of  Lords.  The  affair 
created  great  excitement  throughout  England, 
even  leading  to  riotous  proceedings  in  some 
cases.  In  some  of  these  young  Fleet  mingled 
so  conspicuously  that  he  afterwards  thought  it 


6o  MOTHER   GOOSE. 

prudent  to  forsake  England  for  America.  Ac- 
cordingly he  packed  up  his  belongings  and 
reached  Boston  in  17 12.  Whether  he  brought 
with  him  letters  of  introduction  from  the  Bristol 
Vergooses  to  their  American  cousins  is  uncer- 
tain ;  he  may  very  likely  have  done  so,  for  we 
know  that  he  very  soon  became  acquainted  with 
the  honorable  Colonial  family  of  Vergoose  with 
such  pleasant  results  that  the  dignified  Cotton 
Mather  was  called  upon  to  unite  him  in  mar- 
riage to  one  of  its  daughters. 

His  first  child  was  a  son  whose  advent  was  no 
doubt  a  delight  to  its  parents,  while  to  its 
Grandmother  Goose  it  was  a  joy  unspeakable. 
But  not  unsingable,  fortunately  for  posterity. 
Mrs.  Fleet's  own  presence  in  the  nursery  was 
barely  tolerated  by  the  enthusiastic  grandmother 
who  spent  her  whole  time  there  or  in  wandering 
about  the  house  with  her  grandchild  in  her  arms. 
It  is  not  improbable  that  it  was  when  thus 
employed  she  first  sung  that  now  deathless 
ditty : 


MOTHER  GOOSE.  6l 

"  Goosey,  goosey,  gander, 
"Where  shall  I  wander! 

Up  stairs, 

Down  stairs, 
And  in  my  lady's  chamber." 

Doubtless  all  this  Thomas  Fleet  would  not 
have  objected  to ;  but  this  was  not  all  —  fortu- 
nately for  us,  and  for  him,  as  it  eventually  turned 
out.  Partly  to  amuse  the  infant,  and  more  to 
express  her  unbounded  joy  over  the  fact  of  its 
existence,  she  was  continually  singing  nonsen- 
sical songs  and  rhymes  which  she  had  learned 
in  the  days  of  her  own  youth.  Probably  this 
could  have  been  borne  had  she  been  a  fine 
singer.  But  this  was  exactly  what  she  was  not, 
and  she  was  therefore  a  thorn  in  the  side  of  her 
son-in-law  Thomas.  What  Elizabeth  thought  we 
are  not  told,  but  quite  possibly  her  feelings  were 
tempered  with  filial  affection  and  gratitude. 
Such  was  not  the  case  with  her  husband,  how- 
ever, who  exhausted  every  means  known  to  him 
to  induce  Mother  Goose  to  stop  singing.  He 
ridiculed  her  in  public  and  in  private  and  with 


62  MOTHER   GOOSE. 

very  little  effect  in  either  case.  He  told  her 
that  she  destroyed  the  comfort  of  the  whole 
neighborhood,  which  was  true  enough,  for  the 
grandmother's  voice  was  heard  for  a  long  dis- 
tance and  Fleet  was  not  the  only  person  who 
wished  she  might  become  suddenly  dumb.  To 
his  expostulations  and  to  those  of  the  neigh- 
bors, she  only  laughed  and  sang  the  louder. 

At  last  it  occurred  to  Thomas  one  day  when 
the  sound  of  his  mother-in-law's  voice  followed 
him  all  the  way  down  to  his  printing  house  in 
Pudding  Lane,  that  he  might  collect  these  songs 
and  quaint  rhymes  which  Grandmother  Goose 
was  so  persistently  singing,  print  them  and  per- 
haps turn  a  few  nimble  sixpences  in  that  way. 
With  this  thought  in  mind,  he  listened  afterwards 
with  more  patience  to  the  not  very  melodious 
strains  that  continually  sounded  in  his  ears  and 
wrote  them  down  from  day  to  day  till  he  had 
exhausted  the  list  of  the  ditties  which  his  mother- 
in-law  knew.  To  these  he  added  such  as  he 
could  collect  from  other  sources  and  soon  after 


MOTHER  GOOSE.  63 

published  them  in  book-form  with  the  title : 
Songs  for  the  Nursery  ;  or.  Mother  Goose's  Melo- 
dies for  Children.  On  the  title  page  was  a  rude 
drawing  of  a  goose  with  a  very  long  neck  and 
wide  open  mouth  and  at  the  bottom  of  the  page 
the  words  :  "  Printed  by  T.  Fleet,  at  his  printing- 
house,  Pudding  Lane,  17 19.  Price  two  cop- 
pers."* 

In  all  probability  Mother  Goose  had  no  sus- 
picion of  her  son-in-law's  intention  until  the 
book  appeared  with  its  derisive  title.  What  she 
thought  when  she  saw  herself  thus  publicly  made 
sport  of  we  can  only  guess.f 

*  This  point  has  been  much  disputed.  According  to  an  ancient  ac- 
count-book preserved  among  the  Hancock  Papers  in  the  library  of  the 
N.  E.  Historic  and  Genealogical  Society  Daniel  Henchman,  a  colonial 
bookseller,  published  in  1719  a  volume  of  Verses  for  Children  which  by 
some  has  been  supfKJsed  Jo  be  identical  with  Fleet's  book.  Also,  al- 
though it  is  certain  that  Fleet  in  1712  had  a  printing-house  on  Pudding 
Lane,  we  find  a  statement  in  Winsor's  Memorial  History  0/  Boston 
which  tends  to  discredit  the  title-page  of  the  traditionary  "  first  edition  " 
of  Songs  for  the  Nursery  : 

t  "In  1 7 13,  he  [Fleet]  moved  his  business  to  a  spacious  and  handsome 
house  in  Cornhill  where  he  erected  the  sign  of  the  Heart  and  Crown. 
The  house  served  as  a  home  for  liis  family,  offices  for  his  book  and 
newspaper  printing  and  for  an  auction  room  where,  when  the  labors  of 
his  busy  day  were  ended  he  sold  books,  household  goods,  wearing  ap- 
parel and  whatever  else  was  looked  for  at  a  country  auction.  He  died 
in  July,  1758,  aged  73  years." 


64  MOTHER   GOOSE. 

John  Fleet  Eliot,  the  great-great  grandson  of 
Elizabeth  (Foster)  Goose,  writes  in  1873  to  the 
N.  E.  Historic  and  Genealogical  Register :  "  Mother 
Goose  was  a  plain,  honest  and  industrious  woman, 
of  no  literary  culture,  but  who  devoted  herself 
wholly  to  her  household  duties  and  could  never 
'have  dreamed  of  the  world-wide  renown  she  was 
destined  to  attain." 

But  at  last  Thomas  Fleet  had  had  his  revenge  ; 
a  profitable  revenge  since  it  brought  him  coppers 
in  plenty,  but  I  fancy  it  was  not  so  sweet  a  re- 
venge as  he  had  hoped  it  would  be.  After  the 
first  few  moments  of  angry  surprise  Mother 
Goose  resumed  her  wonted  good  nature,  took 
the  heir  of  the  Pudding  Lane  Printing-House 
once  more  io  her  arms  and  sang  on  as  calmly 
as  if  nothing  had  happened.  But  for  all  that 
something  had  happened.  Thomas  Fleet,  with 
the  double  purpose  of  ridiculing  his  mother-in- 
law  and  at  the  same  time  making  a  profitable 
majtter  of  it,  had  immortalized  her.  What  other 
books  he  may  have  published  few  persons  care 


MOTHER   GOOSE.  65 

to  know;  but  this  one  has  gone  wherever  the 
English  language  is  spoken.  We  can  forgive 
him  his  half-malicious  joke  at  the  expense  of  his 
worthy  mother-in-law,  who  took  such  excellent 
care  of  his  boy,  as  easily  as  she  doubtless  did. 


SIGN   OF   FLEET   THE    PRINTER,    PUBLISHER   OF   FIRST 
EDITION    OF   MOTHER   GOOSE. 


From  that  day  to  this  the  nonsense-j ingles 
between  the  covers  of  Thomas  Fleet's  publica- 
tion have  formed  the  stock  of  nursery  song  and 
recital.  Each  ditty  is  a  story  complete  in  itself, 
and  children  remember  it,  as  they  do  not  the 
more  abstract  and  beautiful  lullaby.     Generally 


66  MOTHER   GOOSE. 

the  child  is  as  profound  an  adept  in  Mother 
Goose's  works  as  the  nurse  or  the  mother,  and 
sings  "  Hey  diddle  diddle  "  to  itself  with  com- 
plete satisfaction,  and  entertains  itself  at  sol- 
itary play  by  shouting  forth 

"  Peter,  Peter, 

Pumpkin  eater, 

Had  a  wife  and  couldn't  keep  her  I 

He  shut  her  in  a  pumpkin-shell 

And  there  he  kept  her  very  well  I " 

Very  few  of  the  Mother  Goose  ditties  can  be 
called  lullabies ;  there  are  "  Rock-a-by-baby,  on 
the  tree-top  "  and  "  Bye  O  Baby  Bunting."  Gen- 
erally our  lullaby  consists  of  variations  upon  the 
one  stanza,  "  Bye-0-baby-bye  ;  "  and  old  hymns 
and  common  melodies  are  sung  instead  of  the 
true  sleep-songs.  Other  nations  than  the  Eng- 
lish-speaking races  more  frequently  sing  genuine 
cradle-songs  to  their  nurslings. 

As  to  the  babies  themselves,  however  much 
those  of  various  nationalities  may  differ  in  certain 
respects,  in  one  important  matter  they  are  all 


MOTHER   GOOSE.  67 

alike  —  they  all  appreciate  a  noise  that  has  some 
approach  to  measure. 

The  small  Laplander  nestled  among  his  furs 
falls  asleep  to  the  monotonous  drone  of  a  lullaby 
as  quickly  as  an  American  baby  would  do.  The 
dusky  little  South  Sea  Islander  is  soothed  by 
the  jingling  of  pieces  of  metal  as  readily  as  his 
whiter-skinned  cousin  by  similar  nursery  music. 
When  great  Caesar  was  not  great  Caesar  at  all, 
but  only  a  very  small  and  discontented  Caesar 
in  the  nurse's  lap  it  is  more  than  likely  that  he 
gave  a  willing  ear  to  the  nurse's  song  : 

"  Lalla,  lalla,  lalla, 
Aut  dormi,  aut  lacta." 

It  does  not  sound  like  much  of  a  lullaby  to  us, 
but  the  small  Roman  was  not  critical.  Twelve 
centuries  later  the  infant  Italian  was  often  sung 
to  sleep  with  a  cradle-song  representing  the 
Virgin  Mary  hushing  the  child  Jesus. 

Here  is  one  stanza  of  the  nine  verses  which 
compose  it : 


68  MOTHER   GOOSE. 

"  Dormi^fili,  dormi  !  mater 

Cantat  vnigenito  : 
Dormi  puer,  dormi  !  pater 

Nato  clamat  parvulo : 
Millies  tibi  laudes  canimus 

Mille,  mille,  millies." 

George  Wither,  the  friend  of  Milton,  wrote 
a  beautiful  "  Rocking  Hymn  "  the  first  stanza  of 
which  is  as  follows  : 

"  Sweet  baby,  sleep  :  what  ails  my  dear ; 
What  ails  my  darling  thus  to  cry  ? 
Be  still,  my  child,  and  lend  thine  ear 
To  hear  me  sing  thy  lullaby. 

My  pretty  lamb, forbear  to  weep; 

Be  still,  my  dear;  sweet  baby,  sleep." 

An  exceedingly  popular  Spanish  lullaby  is  the 
following : 

«  The  Baby  Child  of  Mary, 

Now  cradle  he  has  none  ; 
His  father  is  a  carpenter, 

And  he  shall  make  him  one. 

The  lady  good  St.  Anna, 

The  lord  St.  Joachim, 
They  rock  the  baby's  cradle, 

That  sleep  may  come  to  Him. 


MOTHER   GOOSE.  69 

Then  sleep  thou  too,  my  baby, 

My  little  heart  so  dear, 
The  Virgin  is  beside  thee, 

The  Son  of  God  so  near." 

Of  the  many  German  lullabies  none  is  more 
popular  than  the  famous  one  beginning : 

"  Sleep,  baby,  sleep ; 

Your  father  tends  the  sheep; 

Your  mother  shakes  the  branches  small. 
Whence  happy  dreams  in  showers  fall : 

Sleep,  baby,  sleep." 

Here  is  the  opening  stanza  of  a  very  ancient 
Danish  cradle  hymn :  "  Sleep  sweetly,  little  child ; 
lie  quiet  and  still ;  as  sweetly  as  the  bird  in  the 
wood,  as  the  flowers  in  the  meadow.  God  the 
Father  hath  said,  'Angels  stand  on  watch  where 
mine,  the  little  ones,  are  in  bed.'  " 

A  French  lullaby  sung  by  the  mothers  of  La 
Bresse,  not  far  from  Lyons,  to  their  babies, 
begins : 

"  Le  potipon  voudrait  bien  dormlr  ; 
Le  sotiin-souin  ne  vettt  fas  venir. 
Souin-souin,  veni,  vetiS,  venS, 
Souin-souin,  venS,  veni  done  I " 


yo  MOTHER   GOOSE. 

The  Finland  peasants  sing  thus  to  theirs : 
"Sleep,  little  field-bird;  sleep  sweetly,  pretty 
redbreast.  God  will  wake  thee  when  it  is  time. 
Sleep  is  at  the  door,  and  says  to  me,  '  Is  not 
there  a  sweet  child  here  who  fain  would  sleep  ? 
a  young  child  wrapped  in  swaddling  clothes,  a 
fair  child  resting  beneath  his  woollen  cov- 
erlet?'" 

The  Italians  call  lullabies  ninna-nanna.  Here 
is  one  which  is  sung  in  Logudoro,  the  middle 
province  of  the  island  of  Sardinia : 

"  Oh  !  ninna  and  aniiinia  I 

Sleep,  baby  boy ; 
Oh  I  ninna  and  anninial 

God  give  thee  joy. 
Oh  1  ninna  and  anninia! 

Sweet  joy  be  thine ; 
Oh  !  ninna  and  anninia  ! 

Sleep,  brother  mine. 

Sleep,  and  do  not  cry, 

Pretty,  pretty  one, 
Apple  of  mine  eye, 

Danger  there  is  none  ; 
Sleep,  for  I  am  by. 

Mother's  darling  son. 


MOTHER  GOOSE.  7 1 

Oh  !  ninna  and  anninia  ! 

Sleep,  baby  boy ; 
Oh !  ninna  and  anninia! 

God  give  thee  joy. 
Oh  !  ninna  and  anninia! 

Sweet  joy  be  thine ; 
On  1  ninna  and  anninia ! 

Sleep,  brother  mine." 

A  very  beautiful    lullaby  is   one  which  the 
Roumanian  mothers  sing : 

"  Sleep,  my  daughter,  sleep  an  hour; 
Mother's  darling  gilliflower. 
Mother  rocks  thee,  standing  near, 
She  will  wash  thee  in  the  clear 
Waters  that  from  fountains  run, 
To  protect  thee  from  the  sun. 

Sleep,  my  darling,  sleep  an  hour ; 
Grow  thou  as  the  gilliflower. 
As  a  teardrop*  be  thou  white. 
As  a  willow  tall  and  slight; 
Gentle  as  the  ringdoves  are, 
And  be  lovely  as  a  star!  " 

The  history  of  lullabies  and  cradle  songs  is  a 
long  one  and  every  nation  has  numberless  ninna- 

•  The  Roumanian  name  for  the  lily  of  the  valley. 


72  MOTHER  GOOSE. 

« 

nanna.  Those  I  have  selected  are  perhaps  as 
characteristic  as  any  and  will  serve  to  give  some 
idea  of  their  general  character.  The  greater 
number  of  lullabies  are  the  invention  of  the  com- 
mon people  like  the  rhymes  in  Mother  Goose, 
but  now  and  then  a  cradle  song  written  by  some 
true  poet  has  become  popularized  among  these 
folk  songs  of  the  nursery.  Not  long  ago  a  young 
poet*  died  in  New  York  City  poor  and  alone, 
who  never  had  babies  of  his  own  to  climb  about 
him  or  to  watch  while  their  mother  lulled  them 
to  rest,  but  he  loved  to  look  at  children  and  one 
day  he  wrote  one  of  the  most  beautiful  of  modern 
cradle  songs : 

"  Sleep,  baby,  sleep. 
God  gave  thee  smiles  to  keep, 
And  merry  eyes  will  wait 
Thy  coming  to  the  gate 
When  thou  shalt  be  a  man 
With  all  the  world  to  scan. 

Sleep,  baby,  sleep. 

God  gave  thee  fields  to  reap 

*  James  Berry  Bensel. 


MOTHER   GOOSE.  73 

When  harvest  time  is  here, 
With  sunshine  and  good  cheer. 
But  first,  as  thou  shalt  know. 
He  gave  thee  much  to  sow. 
Sleep,  baby,  sleep. 

Sleep,  baby,  sleep. 
God  gave  thee  tears  to  weep, 
But  not  for  now,  not  now  ; 
Thy  sorrow  will  not  bow 
In  days  to  come,  and  flee ; 
It  will  abide  with  thee. 
Sleep,  baby,  sleep.  '* 


AUTOGRAPH    OF   MOTHER   GOOSE'S    HUSBAND, 


CHAPTER    V. 


CHARLES    PERRAULT. 


THE  iniquity  of  oblivion  blindly  scattereth 
her  poppy,"  writes  the  delightful  old 
physician,  Sir  Thomas  Browne,  in  a  famous 
passage  in  Hydriotaphia ;  and  it  often  hap- 
pens that  the  deeds  in  a  man's  life  which 
seem  to  him  the  most  important  are  exactly  the 
ones  that  posterity  deems  least  worthy  of  its 
attention.  It  has  happened  over  and  over  again 
in  the  annals  of  literature  that  some  piece  of 
labored  writing  respecting  which  the  author  has 
been  unduly  proud  has  failed  to  pass  the  terrible 
winnowing  of  time,  while  some  literary  trifle, 
the  sport  of  his  leisure  hours,  is  all  that  pre- 
serves his  name  in  another  age.  But  for  one 
little  work  upon  which  he  placed  but  slight 
74 


■      CHARLES    PERRAULT.  75 

value  it  is  more  than  probable  that  the  great 
Frenchman,  Perrault,  would  be  a  name  to  us  of 
this  century  and  nothing  more. 

Charles  Perrault  was  born  at  Paris,  January 
12,  1628,  and  was  the  youngest  child  of  Pierre 
Perrault,  an  eminent  Parisian  barrister  of  that 
period.  The  Perraults  seem  to  have  taken  an 
active  share  in  the  education  of  their  children 
and  in  his  Memoirs  the  son  writes  in  regard  to 
this  :  — 

"  My  mother  taught  me  to  read,  after  which  I  was  sent 
to  the  College  de  Beauvais  at  the  age  of  eight  years  and 
a  half.  My  father  took  the  trouble  to  make  me  repeat  my 
lessons  in  the  evening,  and  obliged  me  to  tell  him  in  Latin 
the  substance  of  these  lessons." 

A  rather  trying  ordeal  for  so  young  a  lad. 
He  seems  in  his  schooldays  to  have  been  fond 
of  making  verses  and  even  more  fond  of  argu- 
mentative philosophy.  We  are  told  of  him  that 
vacation  seemed  to  him  just  so  much  time  lost ; 
but  about  this  point  I  am  somewhat  doubtful. 
A  quarrel  with  his  master  resulted  in  his  leaving 


76  CHARLES   PERRAULT. 

college  but  he  continued  his  studies,  and  with  a 
friend  of  his  own  aga  read  continually. 

In  165 1  he  went  with  two  of  his  friends  to 
Orieans  to  procure  licenses  to  practice  law,  fear- 
ing the  stricter  requirements  of  the  law-schools 
at  Paris.  Although  it  was  late  at  night  when 
they  arrived  the  notion  seized  them  that  they 
must  be  examined  that  evening.  Accordingly 
they  managed  to  arouse  those  learned  Doctors 
of  the  Law  who  hastily  put  on  their  law-gowns 
over  their  night-clothes  and  went  into  the  amphi- 
theatre. A  solitary  candle  flickered  on  a  stand 
in  the  great  apartment  and  furnished  but  a  feeble 
defence  against  the  gloom  and  shadows  of  the 
place.  The  three  doctors  seem  to  have  cared 
more  for  their  fees  than  for  the  honor  of  their 
profession,  and  the  replies  of  the  young  men  to 
the  questions  put  them  were  approved  of  although 
they  seem  often  to  have  been  very  wide  of  the 
mark.  While  the  examination  was  going  on  the 
valet  of  the  would-be  advocates  was  counting  out 
the  amount  of  the  fees,  a  proceeding  which  no 


CHARLES    PERRAULT.  77 

doubt  Stimulated  the  examiners  to  pronounce  a 
favorable  verdict. 

In  1654  Pierre  Perrault  became  receiver-gen- 
eral at  Paris  and  made  Charles  his  clerk.  Nine 
years  later  the  younger  Perrault  became  the 
secretary  of  Colbert,  the  Prime  Minister  of 
Louis  XIV.  In  the  exercise  of  this  office  he 
exerted  no  little  influence  upon  the  mind  of 
Colbert  and  secondarily  upon  Louis  himself. 
Perrault  was  chosen  by  Colbert  Secretary  of  the 
French  Academy,  then  numbering  but  a  few  men 
of  letters,  and  through  Perrault's  influence  the 
Academy  of  Sciences  was  established.  He  was 
rapidly  advanced  in  the  favor  of  Colbert  and 
being  appointed  Comptroller-General  of  the 
royal  buildings  he  was  enabled  to  procure  for 
his  older  brother  Claude  the  honor  of  furnishing 
the  designs  for  the  completion  of  the  Louvre. 
Among  the  competing  architects  were  Poussin 
and  Bernini,  whose  chief  work  is  the  famous 
colonnade  of  St.  Peter  at  Rome  ;  but  the  skill 
and    diplomacy  of    Colbert   and   Perrault  tri- 


78  CHARLES    PERRAULT. 

umphed  and  to  Claude  Perrault  was  committed 
the  important  work,  the  completion  of  which 
marks  an  important  era  in  French  architecture. 
The  influence  of  the  younger  Perrault  was  also 
strong  enough  to  procure  for  Claude  the  con- 
struction of  the  Observatory  of  Paris  and  the 
completion  of  the  decorations  of  La  Place  du 
Troni.  Many  of  the  adornments  of  the  park  at 
Versailles  are  the  work  of  Claude  Perrault  whose 
genius,  however,  might  have  languished  in  ob- 
scurity but  for  the  power  of  his  brother  Charles, 
his  junior  by  many  years.  To  Charles  Perrault, 
too,  is  due  the  admission  of  the  public  to  the 
gardens  of  the  palace  of  the  Tuileries.  Even 
the  enlightened  Colbert  thought  they  should  be 
kept  sacred  to  the  use  of  royalty,  but  Perrault 
felt  differently.  He  was  a  man  of  wide  sym- 
pathies and  considered  as  well  as  understood 
something  of  what  was  needed  by  those  beneath 
him  in  rank  and  station. 

"  I  am  persuaded,"  he  said  very  simply,  but  at 
the  same  time  very  beautifully,  "  that  the  gar- 


CHARLES    PERRAULT.  79 

dens  of  kings  are  so  large  and  spacious  only 
that  all  their  children  may  be  able  to  walk  in 
them." 

His  feeling  in  the  matter  was  so  strong  that 
he  overcame  Colbert's  opposition,  and  the 
king's  garden  became  the  garden  of  the  king's 
people.  Colbert  perhaps  never  fully  under- 
stood his  secretary's  anxiety  on  this  point  and 
doubtless  Perrault's  contemporaries  considered 
it  an  idle  if  not  an  unwise  proceeding ;  but  it 
seems  to  us  of  this  later  day  to  be  verily  one  of 
those  actions  of  the  just  which 

"  Smell  sweet  and  blossom  in  the  dust." 

In  1671  Perrault  was  formally  admitted  to 
membership  in  the  French  Academy  and  he 
contributed  materially  to  the  brilliancy  and 
prosperity  of  that  body,  into  which  he  intro- 
duced from  time  to  time  many  needful  reforms 
in  its  management  and  customs. 

The  death  of  Colbert  in  1683  closed  Perrault's 
official  career  and  he  retired  to  private  life  and 


8o  CHARLES   PERRAULT. 

for  a  time  devoted  himself  to  the  education  of 
his  sons.  The  leisure  which  he  may  have  vainly 
coveted  in  his  public  life  was  now  given  to  lit- 
erary pursuits  and  he  produced  about  this  period 
his  Parallele  des  Anciens  et  des  Modernes,  Sihcle  de 
Zouis  le  Grand,  Histoire  des  Homtnes  Illnstres  du 
Steele  de  Louis  XIV,  Apologie  des  Femmes  and  sev- 
eral lesser  works. 

The  publication  of  the  first  two  of  these 
resulted  in  a  prolonged  literary  war  between 
Perrault  and  his  fellow  academician,  Despr^aux, 
in  which  the  advantage  of  learning  seems  to  have 
been  on  the  side  of  the  latter,  but  in  wit  and 
good-nature  Perrault  was  decidedly  the  superior 
of  his  antagonist.  How  little  real  enmity  Per- 
rault felt  in  the  matter  is  shown  in  the  general 
gdbd  temper  of  his  replies.  After  a  long  period, 
so  long  indeed  that  the  two  adversaries  had  al- 
most forgotten  the  original  point  at  issue  and 
their  friends  were  heartily  weary  of  the  dispute 
a  reconciliation  was  effected  greatly  to  the  re- 
lief  of   the  literary  mind  of  the  period.     The 


CHARLES   PERRAULT.  8 1 

dust  of  this  conflict  has  settled  undisturbed  for 
two  centuries  and  the  works  which  occasioned 
it  lie  unread  and  unopened  on  library  shelves. 
Despreaux  is  noted  for  little  else  than  his  part 
in  this  long-past  quarrel  and  Perrault,  instead  of 
being  remembered  for  the  works  he  labored  so 
hard  to  defend,  is  honored  now  for  very  different 
reasons.  As  the  author  of  the  Hommes  Illustres 
or  the  Parallele  he  is  interesting  only  to  the  lit- 
erary antiquarian ;  as  the  author  of  the  immortal 
Contes  de  Fdes  or  Fairy  Tales,  his  memory  should 
be  dear  to  every  child  who  has  trembled  over  the 
impending  fate  of  Red  Riding-hood^  laughed 
over  the  adventures  of  the  redoubtable  Fuss  in 
Boots,  or  followed  with  breathless  interest  the 
story  of  Cinderella  from  the  chimney  corner  to 
the  trying  on  of  the  slipper.  • 

It  must  not  be  understood  that  Perrault  was 
the  inventor  of  these  famous  tales,  which  in 
various  forms  had  existed  from  earliest  times, 
as  we  have  already  had  occasion,  to  notice  in 
the  case  of  Cinderella.     But  to  him  is  due  the 


82  CHARLES    PERRAULT. 

glory  of  giving  to  these  popular  legends  and 
nursery  tales  permanent  form.  From  the  vague 
and  variable  folk-tales  which  they  had  been  till 
his  time,  they  became  at  his  touch  the  real,  liv- 
ing stories  which  we  know.  Three  of  these  fairy 
tales,  Peau  a'Ane  Les  Souhaits  Ridicules,  and  the 
story  of  Griselidis  were  written  in  verse  and 
these  are  the  least  meritorious.  One  of  these, 
Les  Souhaits  Ridicules,  or  The  Ridiculous  Wishes, 
contains  a  moral  the  application  of  which  is  well 
worth  heeding  at  all  times.  Briefly  its  events 
are  as  follows  :  — 

"  A  wood-cutter,  tired  of  his  painful  life,  was  one  day 
complaining  that  cruel  heaven  had  never  granted  one  of 
his  desires,  when  Jupiter  appeared  to  him  and  promised 
to  gratify  his  first  three  wishes  whatever  they  might  be. 
The  delighted  man  hastened  to  communicate  this  good 
news  to  his  wife,  and  they  agreed  that  he  must  not  be 
hasty,  but  defer  his  first  wish  until  the  morrow.  However, 
seated  before  a  good  fire,  enjoying  the  sweets  of  repose, 
he  thoughtlessly  wished  for  an  ell  of  sausage  to  accom- 
pany the  wine  he  was  drinking.  Scarcely  was  the  wish 
expressed  when  his  wife  perceived  an  immensely  long 
sausage  meandering  towards  her  from  the  chimney  corner. 
Vexed  with  her  husband's  stupidity,  she   commenced  a 


CHARLES    PERRAULT,  83 

violent  tirade  against  him  :  '  When  you  might  obtain  an 
empire,  gold,  pearls,  rubies  and  diamonds,  is  it  a  sausage 
that  you  should  desire  ?  ' 

"  The  husband,  though  meekly  confessing  his  wrong, 
was  on  the  verge  of  wishing  himself  a  widower.  At  last, 
exasperated  by  the  continued  scolding  of  his  wife,  he 
cried :  '  Would  to  heaven,  abominable  creature,  the  sau- 
sage were  hung  at  the  end  of  thy  nose  ! ' 

"  This  prayer  was  answered.  The  sausage  immediately 
attached  itself  to  the  nose  of  the  irritated  wife.  This 
ornament  did  not  add  to  her  beauty,  but,  hanging  before 
her  mouth,  it  prevented  her  from  speaking  with  ease,  an 
advantage  so  great  that  for  a  happy  moment  the  husband 
thought  of  wishing  nothing  further.  '  I  might,'  thought 
he,  'with  one  leap,  become  a  king;  but  then,  how  the 
queen  would  look  on  the  throne  with  a  nose  an  ell  long  ! 
I  must  let  her  decide  whether  she  will  be  a  queen  with 
the  horrible  nose  she  now  has,  or  remain  a  woodman's 
wife  with  the  one  she  formally  had.' 

"  Of  course  she  chose  the  latter.  So  the  poor  man  did 
not  become  a  grand  potentate,  nor  fill  his  purse  with  gold, 
too  happy  to  employ  his  only  remaining  wish  in  restoring 
his  wife  to  her  former  state." 

The  prose  tales,  La  Belle  au  Bois  Dormant,  Le 
Petit  Chaperon  Rouge,  La  Barbe-Bleu,  Le  Chat 
Bott'e,  Les  Fees,  Cendrillon,  Riquet  a  la  Houppe, 
and  Le  Petit  Poucet  are  told  in  a  style  which  is 


84  CHARLES   PERRAULT. 

a  model  for  careless  grace  and  felicity.  They 
were  written  by  him  With  little  thought  that  they 
would  constitute  his  greatest  claim  to  remem- 
brance ;  but  such  as  they  are,  the  amusement  of 
his  lighter  hours,  these  delightful  little  romances 
are  immortal.  One  of  these  prose  tales,  Les  Fees^ 
may  possibly  be  new  to  some  readers,  at  least  in 
the  manner  in  which  Perrault  tells  it. 

"  There  was  once  a  widow  who  had  two  daughters ;  the 
elder  resembled  her  so  much  in  disposition  and  looks  that 
whoever  saw  her  saw  the  mother.  They  were  both  so 
disagreeable  and  proud  that  no  one  could  live  with  them. 
The  younger,  who  was  the  real  portrait  of  her  father  as  to 
gentleness  and  goodness  was,  besides,  one  of  the  most 
beautiful  girls  that  one  could  see.  As  one  naturally  likes 
what  resembles  himself  {laves  his  like)  this  mother  was 
exceedingly  fond  of  her  elder  daughter,  and  at  the  same 
time  had  a  great  aversion  to  the  younger  and  made  her 
eat  in  the  kitchen  and  work  incessantly. 

"  Among  other  things,  this  poor  child  was  obliged  to  go 
twice  a  day,  a  full  half  league  from  the  house  to  get  a 
large  pitcher  of  water.  One  day  when  she  was  at  the 
fountain  there  came  to  her  a  poor  woman  who  begged  her 
for  a  drink  of  water. 

" '  Yes,  indeed,  my  good  mother,'  said  this  fair  maid ; 
and  immediately  rinsing  her  pitcher,  she  filled  it  at  the 


CHARLES   PERRAULT.  85 

clearest  part  of  the  fountain  and  presented  it  to  her,  sup- 
porting the  pitcher  that  she  might  drink  more  easily. 

"  The  good  woman,  having  drunk,  said  to  her  :  '  You  are 
so  handsome,  so  good  and  so  obliging  that  I  must  make 
you  a  gift ; '  for  she  was  a  fairy  who  had  taken  the  form  of 
a  poor  village  woman,  in  order  to  see  how  far  the  civility 
of  this  young  girl  would  go.  '  This  is  my  gift  to  you,' 
continued  the  fairy ;  *  with  each  word  you  speak  there 
will  come  from  your  mouth  a  flower,  or  a  precious  stone.' 

"  When  the  beautiful  girl  reached  home,  her  mother 
scolded  her  for  returning  so  late  from  the  spring. 

" '  I  ask  your  pardon,  my  mother,'  said  the  poor  girl, 
'  for  having  delayed  so  long ' ;  upon  saying  these  words 
there  came  from  her  mouth  two  roses,  two  pearls  and 
two  great  diamonds. 

"  What  do  I  see  !  '  said  her  mother  in  astonishment  ; 
'  I  think  pearls  and  diamonds  are  coming  from  her  mouth. 
How  is  this,  my  daughter  ? '  (This  was  the  first  time  that 
she  had  called  her  her  daughter.)  The  poor  child  related 
all  that  had  happened  to  her,  the  words  being  accom- 
panied by  a  shower  of  diamonds. 

"  *  Truly,'  said  the  mother,  *  I  must  send  my  daughter 
there.  Here,  Fanchon,  see  what  comes  from  the  mouth 
of  your  sister  when  she  speaks ;  wouldn't  you  be  very 
glad  to  have  the  same  gift  ?  You  have  only  to  go  to  the 
spring  for  water  and  when  a  poor  woman  asks  you  for  a 
drink  give  her  some  very  civilly.' 

"  *  It  would  be  fine  to  see  me  going  to  the  spring,' 
replied  the  rude  girl. 


86  CHARLES   PERRAULT. 

"  *  Y^ou  must  go,'  replied  the  mother, '  and  immediately, 
too.' 

"  Fanchon  went,  taking  with  her  the  finest  silver  flask 
in  the  house,  but  grumbling  all  the  way.  She  had  no 
sooner  reached  the  spring  than  she  saw  emerging  from 
the  woods  a  lady  magnificently  clothed,  who  came  to  her 
and  asked  for  a  drink.  It  was  the  same  fairy  that  had 
appeared  to  her  sister,  but  who  had  assumed  the  manner 
and  the  garb  of  a  princess  in  order  to  see  how  far  the 
incivility  of  this  girl  would  extend. 

" '  Have  I  come  here,'  said  the  proud  cieature,  '  to  give 
you  a  drink  1  I  have  brought  a  silver  flask  expressly 
to  give  Madam  a  drink,  have  I  ?  I  think  so  indeed ! 
Well !  drink  from  it  if  you  wish.' 

"'You  are  not  very  civil,'  replied  the  fairy,  without 
becoming  angry.  '  Since  you  are  so  disobliging,  this  is 
my  gift  to  you  ;  every  time  that  you  speak,  a  serpent  or  a 
toad  will  come  from  your  mouth.' 

"  As  soon  as  her  mother  perceived  her,  she  cried  out : 
Well  I  my  daughter  ! ' 

"  '  Well !  my  mother ! '  replied  the  surly  one,  throwing 
out  two  vipers  and  two  toads. 

"  '  O  heavens ! '  exclaimed  her  mother,  '  what  do  I  see 
there  ?  It  is  her  sister  who  is  the  cause  of  it.  She  shall 
pay  for  it ; '  and  she  ran  to  beat  her  but  the  poor  child  fled 
and  took  refuge  in  a  neighboring  forest. 

"  The  king's  son,  who  was  returning  from  the  chase, 
met  her  and  seeing  how  beautiful  she  was,  asked  her  what 
she  was  doing  there  all  alone  and  why  she  was  weeping. 


CHARLES    PERRAULT.  87 

"  '  Alas !  sir,  my  mother  has  driven  me  from  my  home.' 
"  The  king's  son,  who  saw  five  or  six  pearls  and  as 
many  diamonds  issuing  from  her  mouth,  begged  her  to 
tell  him  the  cause  of  it.  Then  she  related  to  him  her 
whole  adventure.  The  prince  fell  in  love  with  her  ;  and, 
considering  that  such  a  gift  was  worth  more  than  the 
dowry  that  any  other  could  bring  him,  he  took  her  to 
the  palace  of  his  father,  where  he  married  her. 

"  As  for  her  sister,  she  made  herself  so  detested,  that 
her  own  mother  sent  her  away,  and  the  unhappy  girl  after 
wandering  about  without  finding  any  one  who  would 
receive  her,  went  to  die  in  the  corner  of  a  wood." 

Perrault  died  May  i6,  1703,  regretted  by  the 
nation  at  large.  During  his  life  he  was  the 
object  of  much  enmity,  but  even  his  bitterest 
opponents  never  considered  him  other  than  an 
upright,  honest  man.  He  must  have  been  a 
rare  man  of  which  an  adversary  could  write 
thus : — 

"  He  possessed  all  the  qualities  which  form  the  good 
and  honest  man  :  he  was  full  of  piety,  probity  and  virtue  ; 
he  was  refined,  modest,  obliging,  faithful  to  all  the  duties 
demanded  by  natural  and  acquired  ties ;  and,  in  an  im- 
portant post  under  one  of  the  greatest  ministers  which 
France  has  ever  had  and  who  honored  him  with  his  con- 


88  CHARLfeS    PERRAULT. 

fidence,  he  never  used  his  favor  for  his  private  fortune 
but  always  employed  it  for  his  friends." 

It  is  pleasant  to  know  that  this  writer  to  whom 
we  owe  so  many  delightful  hours  in  childhood 
was  a  man  in  every  respect  so  far  above  reproach 
in  all  the  relations  of  life.  Of  another  great 
Frenchman,  his  contemporary,  to  whom  we  like- 
wise owe  a  debt  of  gratitude,  we  shall  hear  a 
vastly  different  story.  But  in  the  writer  Per- 
rault  we  can  hbnor  the  man  as  well. 


CHAPTER  VI. 


THE   BROTHERS   GRIMM. 


THERE  is  something  very  attractive  to  most 
people  in  the  thought  of  literary  com- 
panionship extending  over  a  long  period  of 
years,  or  for  a  lifetime  even,  and  the  names 
thus  linked  together  have  a  double  claim  upon 
our  remembrance.  Who  ever  thinks  of  Beau- 
mont without  Fletcher,  of  Erckmann  apart  from 
Chitrian,  of  William  Howitt  and  not  at  the 
same  time  of  Mary  Howitt  his  wife  ? 

It  is  thus  we  think  of  Jacob  Ludwig  Karl 
Grimm  and  of  Wilhelm  Karl  Grimm  his  brother. 
It  is  not  easy,  so  intimately  were  they  associated 
in  their  life-work,  to  always  think  of  them  as 
two  men  with  separate  and  distinct  individuali- 
ties ;  it  is  rather  of  one  delightful  personality 
89 


90 


THE    BROTHERS   GRIMM. 


that  we  speak  when  we  name  "  the  brothers 
Grimm." 

There  was  but  a  year's  difference  in  their 
ages,  Wilhelm  having  been  born  in  Hanau,  Ger- 
many, in  1784,  and  Jacob  a  year  later,  in  1785. 
Their  father  was  amtmann  or  bailiff  of  the  dis- 
trict, but  removed  to  Steinau  when  Jacob  was 
about  ten  years  old  and,  dying  soon  after,  left 
his  family  comparatively  poor. 

When  very  young  Jacob  was  noted  for  his 
precocity.  He  read  with  ease  when  his  mates 
were  still  involved  in  the  mysteries  of  the  alpha- 
bet. The  death  of  his  father  might  have  put 
an  end  to  the  education  of  the  brothers  but  for 
the  kindness  of  their  aunt,  Henrietta  Philippina 
Zimmer,  who  lived  at  the  Electoral  Court  at 
Cassel.  She  invited  the  boys  to  Cassel  and  un- 
der her  care  they  prepared  for  the  university  at 
the  Lyceum  in  Cassel,  A  taste  for  drawing 
seems  to  have  been  common  with  the  brothers 
at  this  time  —  a  taste  shared  also  by  a  younger 
brother  Emil,  who  afterwards  became  a  profes- 


THE    BROTHERS   GRIMM.  9I 

sor  of  the  art.  After  leaving  the  Lyceum  the 
brothers  studied  at  the  University  of  Marbourg 
together  and  here  they  came  under  the  instruc- 
tion of  the  learned  jurist  Savigny,  whose  influ- 
ence had  a  marked  effect  upon  them,  and  it  was 
during  this  period  that  they  received  the  first 
impulse  towards  linguistic  study  to  which  their 
lives  thereafter  were  largely  devoted. 

In  the  winter  of  1805  Savigny,  who  was  then 
in  Paris,  sent  for  Jacob  Grimm  to  assist  him  in 
his  work  there.  So  complimentary  an  invitation 
was  not  to  be  put  by,  but  Frau  Grimm's  anxiety 
about  her  son's  safety  was  so  great  that  while 
he  was  on  his  way  to  Paris  she  could  not  sleep 
but  was  constantly  getting  up  from  bed  to  notice 
the  weather  fearing,  like  the  loving  German 
mother  that  she  was,  that  he  might  freeze  to 
death  in  the  diligence,  or  meet  with  some  acci- 
dent. She  did  not  live  to  enjoy  the  fame  her 
sons  afterwards  attained,  but  died  in  1808,  while 
Jacob  was  a  clerk  in  the  War  Department  with 
the  wretched  salary  of  one  hundred  thalers  a  year. 


92  THE   BROTHERS   GRIMM. 

In  July,  however,  of  that  year  he  became  the 
librarian  of  the  King  of  Westphalia,  an  office 
which  brought  him  a  handsome  salary  and  lei- 
sure to  pursue  his  studies.  It  must  have  been 
a  quiet  place,  this  royal  library  of  Westphalia, 
for  no  one  but  the  king  could  take  books  from 
it,  and  his  Majesty  seldom  availed  himself  of  his 
privilege.  Here  for  five  years  Jacob  lived  and 
studied,  much  of  the  time  with  his  brother  Wil- 
helm,  until  the  restoration  of  the  Hessian  gov- 
ernment put  an  end  to  the  kingdom  of  West- 
phalia. A  year  or  two  later  he  was  appointed 
second  librarian  in  the  Electoral  library  at 
Cassel  and  to  his  great  delight  a  place  was  also 
found  for  Wilhelm  in  the  same  library,  and  here 
they  remained  till  1829, 

The  thirteen  years  which  they  spent  here  were 
full  of  hard  work  for  both,  but  it  was  labor  into 
which  they  put  their  whole  souls,  and  work  which 
none  could  do  as  well  as  they.  While  Jacob  was 
custodian  of  the  Westphalian  library  he  and  his 
brother  had  published  several  books  together  as 


W1LHJ4LM    KARL    CiRIMM. 


THE   BROTHERS   GRIMM.  95 

well  as  separately,  mainly  in  the  department  of 
legendary  tales  and  ballads.  But  it  was  in  1812 
that  they  published  the  volumes  which  have 
made  their  names  familiar  to  every  German  child 
and  to  countless  children  beside  in  other  lands. 
These  were  the  three  volumes  of  the  Children's 
Tales  and  Household  Tales,  the  Kinder-und 
Hausmdrchen.  The  stories  in  these  books  were 
gathered  from  the  peasantry  in  Hesse  and  Hanau 
and  written  down  in  a  style  unequaled  for  sim- 
plicity, ease  and  truthfulness.  Many  of  these 
tales  were  told  them  by  the  wife  of  a  cow-herd 
in  Niederzwharn,  near  Cassel,  who  seems  to 
have  been  in  many  respects  a  most  remarkable 
woman.  Her  memory  appears  to  have  been  a 
perfect  mine  of  folk-lore  and  she  seems  to  have 
delighted  in  relating  these  tales.     Say  they :  — 

"  She  told  her  stories  thoughtfully,  accurately  and  with 
wonderful  vividness,  and  evidently  had  a  delight  in  doing 
it.  First  she  related  them  from  beginning  to  end,  and 
then,  if  required,  repeated  them  more  slowly,  so  that  after 
some  practice  it  was  easy  to  write  from  her  dictation." 

Of  their  own  part  in  the  work,  that  of  putting 


96  THE   BROTHERS   GRIMM. 

these  tales  into  permanent  form,  the  brothers 
tell  us :  — 

"  Our  first  aim  in  collecting  these  stories  has  been  ex- 
actness and  truth.  We  have  added  nothing  of  our  own, 
have  embellished  no  incident  or  feature  of  the  story,  but 
have  given  its  substance  just  as  we  received  it.  It  will  of 
course  be  understood  that  the  mode  of  telling  and  carry- 
ing out  particular  details  is  due  to  us,  but  we  have  striven 
to  retain  everything  that  we  knew  to  be  characteristic, 
that  in  this  respect  also  we  might  leave  the  collection  the 
many-sidedness  of  nature." 

It  is  the  simple  style  in  which  the  brothers 
cast  these  tales  that  has  invested  them  with  so 
great  a  charm,  the  homely  directness  which  has 
lost  nothing  in  its  translation  from  the  peasant 
dialects  in  which  they  were  first  heard,  to  the 
polished  High  German  tongue. 

But  the  Grimms  had  something  more  in  mind 
than  simply  the  collection  of  a  number  of  curious 
peasant  nursery  tales.  They  believed  that  in 
the  study  of  the  history  of  nations  the  humbler 
spheres  of  life  must  not  be  disregarded.  Before 
their   day   history   concerned   itself  very   little 


THE    BROTHERS    GRIMM.  97 

with  the  life  of  the  common  people.  Their  ex- 
istence was  not  considered  to  have  any  bearing 
upon  the  nation's  life  and  it  is  for  this  reason 
that  we  search  in  vain  in  the  histories  written 
previous  to  this  century  for  any  glimpses  of  the 
actual  life  of  the  people  who  form  the  major 
part  of  any  nation.  Modern  history  in  the  main 
is  written  from  a  different  stand-point  and  does 
not  disdain  to  show  us  something  of  the  life  of 
the  yeoman  as  well  as  of  that  of  the  rulers  and 
nobles.  To  this  change  in  the  manner  of  writ- 
ing history  the  Grimms  were  most  important 
contributors,  since  they  were  practically  the  first 
to  recognize  the  importance  of  considering  the 
humbler  walks  of  life  as  an  aid  in  the  study  of 
history. 

For  several  years  after  this  the  brothers  con- 
tinued to  write  and  publish  together  and  among 
the  works  thus  produced  were  Old  German  For- 
ests, a  selection  of  extracts  from  the  Elder  Edda, 
a  collection  of  German  legends,  and  a  volume 
of  Irish  fairy  legends.     But  the  first  great  work 


98  THE   BROTHERS   GRIMM. 

of  Jacob  Grimm's  life  was  a  German  grammar, 
in  four  large  octavo  volumes  which  appeared  at 
intervals  from  1819  to  1837.  C)f  this  work, 
which  was  really  a  study  of  the  German  lan- 
guage, it  has  been  said  that  it  showed  to  the 
learned  world  for  the  first  time  what  a  language 
is.  While  this  book  was  in  progress  he  pub- 
lished a  profound  work  on  the  legal  antiquities 
of  Germany  which  aimed  to  show  how  close  a 
relation  exists  between  a  nation's  law  and  its 
manners  and  customs  and  its  archaeology. 

While  Jacob  Grimm  was  engaged  upon  themes 
like  these,  Wilhelm  was  equally  busy  although 
the  books  that  he  published  were  not  of  so  am- 
bitious a  character  as  those  of  his  brother.  One 
of  these,  however,  a  work  on  the  Heroic  Legends 
of  the  Germans,  was  considered  by  Jacob  to  be 
Wilhelm's  masterpiece.  The  same  year  in  which 
this  appeared,  1829,  the  brothers  received  ap- 
pointments to  the  University  of  Gottingen,  Jacob 
as  professor  and  librarian,  Wilhelm  as  assistant 
librarian.    Although  they  regretted  leaving  Gas- 


THE    BROTHERS   GRIMM.  99 

sel,  the  change  in  many  ways  was  advantageous 
and  the  salaries  attached  to  their  new  positions 
being  liberal  they  were  not  subject  to  pecuniary 
embarrassments  as  heretofore. 

At  Gottingen  Jacob  lectured  often  on  com- 
parative German  grammar  and  some  other  topics 
and  Wilhelm,  whose  style  was  not  unlike  his 
brother's,  upon  old  German  literature  and  the 
Niebelungenlied.  Both,  it  is  pleasant  to  know, 
were  great  favorites  with  the  students  at  the 
University.  The  principal  work  produced  by 
Jacob  Grimm  at  Gottingen  was  his  well-known 
German  Mythology  in  which  book  he  clearly 
demonstrated  that  common  superstitions  and 
beliefs  are  often  the  remains  of  a  nation's  ear- 
liest religion. 

In  1837  certain  political  events  occurred  which 
put  an  end  to  the  residence  of  the  Grimms  in 
Gottingen.  William  iv.  of  England,  who  was 
also  King  of  Hanover,  having  died,  the  two 
kingdoms  were  declared  distinct  and  the  Duke 
of  Cumberland,  brother  to  William  iv.,  became 


lOO  THE   BROTHERS   GRIMM. 

the  new  King  of  Hanover.  The  new  monarch 
refusing  to  recognize  the  liberal  constitution 
which  his  brother  had  given  to  Hanover,  a  pro- 
test was  entered  against  the  act  by  the  Univer- 
sity of  Gottingen  signed  by  seven  of  the  pro- 
fessors, among  whom  were  the  brothers  Grimm. 
The  immediate  result  of  this  was  the  removal 
from  office  by  the  king  of  the  seven  professors 
and  the  order  that  three  of  them,  Dahlman  and 
Jacob  Grimm  and  Gervinus,  should  leave  the 
kingdom  within  three  days.  The  exiled  pro- 
fessors were  accompanied  to  the  frontiers  by 
the  students  in  a  body  who  resolved  not  to  re- 
demand  the  lecture  fees  which  they  had  paid 
the  professors  in  advance. 

A  year  later  Wilhelm  followed  Jacob  to  Cassel 
where  they  began  jointly  to  prepare  their  great 
German  Lexicon,  ''  Deutsches  Worterbuch,"  the 
first  volume  of  which  appeared  in  1852  and  the 
last  in  1862.  In  1841  the  brothers  were  invited 
to  Berlin  as  members  of  the  Academy  by  the 
King  of  Prussia,  Frederic  William  iv.,  and  in 


JACOB    LUDVVIG     KARL   GRIMM. 


THE   BROTHERS   GRIMM.  103 

Berlin  the  remainder  of  their  lives  was  mainly 
spent.  Although  Wilhelm  from  this  time  pub- 
lished a  number  of  minor  works  his  principal 
labor  was  given  to  the  great  Lexicon,  the  work 
upon  which  in  the  last  seven  years  of  Wilhelm's 
life  was  shared  equally  with  his  brother.  Dur- 
ing his  life  in  Berlin  Jacob  Grimm  published  a 
History  of  the  German  Language  in  two  large 
volumes  and  a  number  of  other  works  beside 
working  diligently  upon  the  Lexicon  with  his 
brother.  When  one  thinks  of  the  amount  of 
work  achieved  by  these  two  men  in  the  course 
of  their  lives  it  seems  as  if  they  could  never 
have  known  an  idle  moment,  yet  Wilhelm  de- 
voted only  the  daytime  to  study  and  Jacob  would 
never  refuse  a  visitor  at  any  time. 

Nothing  seems  ever  to  have  marred  the  har- 
mony which  existed  between  these  two.  In 
their  early  years  they  roomed  together,  studied 
at  the  same  table  and  even  dressed  alike,  and 
for  a  long  time  after  they  became  men  they  had 
their   study-chamber   in    common.      Later   they 


I04  THE    BROTHERS   GRIMM. 

occupied  study-chambers  which  joined.  Wilhelm 
was  intolerant  of  interruptions  and  could  work 
only  in  silence,  while  Jacob,  who  if  left  to  him- 
self would  keep  at  work  without  intermission, 
was  able  to  resume  his  task  with  perfect  ease 
after  any  interruption.  The  marriage  of  Wil- 
helm in  1825  did  not  disturb  the  intimacy  of  the 
brothers,  for  Jacob  became  one  of  his  brother's 
family  and  Frau  Grimm  attended  to  his  interests 
as  faithfully  as  to  those  of  her  husband.  The 
brothers  possessed  their  library  in  common  and 
of  this  library  Jacob  was  custodian.  So  familiar 
was  he  with  his  books  that  he  could  find  any  one 
of  them  at  night  without  a  light,  and  he  de- 
lighted to  get  up  and  put  his  hand  on  some  vol- 
ume for  which  the  others  were  searching  in  vain. 
Besides  their  common  passion  for  books  they 
were  equally  fond  of  flowers.  They  had  little 
opportunity  to  indulge  this  taste  as  their  life 
was  spent  in  cities,  but  in  Wilhelm's  windows 
primroses  bloomed  luxuriantly  while  in  Jacob's 
were  gilliflowers  and  heliotrope. 


THE    BROTHERS    GRIMM.  105 

It  was  not  until  December,  1859,  that  the 
earthly  end  of  this  beautiful  friendship  came. 
Then  the  long  companionship  was  broken  by 
the  death  of  Wilhelm.  On  the  twentieth  of 
September,  1863,  nearly  four  years  later,  a  short 
illness  closed  the  life  of  Jacob,  the  greatest  of 
the  two  brothers  whose  long  lives  were  so  full 
of  noble  achievement  and  were  such  eminent 
examples  of  the  value  of  patient  industry.  The 
character  of  the  younger  brother  was  the  strong- 
er of  the  two  and  to  him  was  due  the  planning 
and  original  suggestion  of  everything  which 
they  wrote  in  common.  He  combined  in  him- 
self a  delicate  poetic  sense  with  the  exactness 
and  thoroughness  of  the  scientist,  while  his  devo- 
tion to  truth  was  the  mainspring  of  his  life.  His 
literary  style  was  unlike  that  of  any  writer  of 
his  time  except  that  of  his  brother,  whom  in 
originality  of  thought  he  much  excelled.  But 
the  life  of  both  was  modeled  upon  the  same 
plan  and  the  attainments  of  Wilhelm  are  inferior 
in  degree  only,  and  not  in  kind  to  those  of  his 


Io6  THE    BROTHERS   GRIMM. 

brother.  How  complete  the  harmony  and  mu- 
tual comprehension  was  may  be  seen  from  the 
dedication  of  the  third  volume  of  Jacob's  gram- 
mar: 

"My  dear  Wilhelm:  —  When  last  winter  you  were 
so  ill,  I  was  obliged  to  fear  that  your  faithful  eyes  might 
perhaps  never  light  upon  the  pages  now  before  you.  I 
was  seated  at  your  table,  in  your  chair,  and  my  mind  was 
filled  with  inexpressible  sadness  when  I  saw  with  how 
much  order  and  neatness  you  had  read  and  extracted  from 
the  first  volumes  of  my  work.  It  appeared  to  me  then 
that  I  had  written  it  for  you  alone,  and  that,  if  you  were 
taken  away  from  me,  I  could  never  proceed  any  further 
with  its  composition.  God's  mercy  has  protected  us 
and  left  you  with  us,  and  it  is  therefore  to  you  in  all  jus- 
tice the  present  volume  more  especially  belongs.  It  has 
been  said  truly,  that  certain  books  are  written  for  pos- 
terity ;  but  it  is  nevertheless  even  more  true,  that  at  the 
same  time  each  work  of  the  kind  belongs  first  of  all  to 
the  limited  circle  in  which  we  live,  and  that  that  circle 
alone  contains  the  key  to  its  most  intimate  sense,  which 
often  may  remain  sealed  to  all  the  rest.  At  any  rate, 
when  you  read  me,  you  who  know  exactly  my  manner, 
with  all  its  commendable  qualities  and  its  defects,  I  expe- 
rience more  satisfaction  than  if  I  were  read  by  a  hundred 
others,  who  may  not  comprehend  me  properly  here  and 
there,  or  to  whom  my  work,  in  many  a  part  of  it,  may  be 


THE    BROTHERS   GRIMM,  107 

a  matter  of  indifference.  But  as  for  you,  I  know  that  you 
peruse  every  portion  of  my  book  with  the  most  impartial 
and  most  constant  interest,  and  that  not  only  on  account 
of  the  subject  itself,  but  also  for  my  own  sake.  May  you 
therefore  be  fraternally  contented  with  that  which  I  now 
dedicate  to  you." 


CHAPTER  VII. 

LA   FONTAINE   "THE  GOOD." 

"  La  Fontaine's  Fables  are  like  a  basket  of  strawberries : 
you  begin  by  taking  out  the  largest  and  best,  but  little  by  lit- 
tle you  eat  first  one,  then  another,  until  at  last  ike  basket  is 
empty."  Madame  de  Sevigne. 

READERS  of  Charles  Dickens's  Child's 
History  of  England  will  readily  call  to 
mind  the  famous  chapter  relating  to  Charles  ii., 
so  often  called  "  The  Merry  Monarch."  In  this 
chapter  the  writer  in  a  strain  of  the  bitterest 
irony  proceeds  to  relate  many  of  the  most  objec- 
tionable acts  of  that  royal  profligate,  applying  the 
adjective  "  merry  "  to  each  of  them.  The  satire  is 
doubtless  overdone,  for  Dickens  seldom  knew 
when  to  draw  the  line  between  moderation  and 
excess  in  passages  of  this  kind,  but  nevertheless 
1 08 


LA    FONTAINE    "  THE    GOOD."  1 09 

the  chapter  serves  to  point  with  terrible  distinct- 
ness the  frightful  mockery  of  the  term  when 
applied  to  Charles  ir.  True,  the  king  was 
merry  enough,  but  it  was  mirth  for  which  his 
people  paid  dearly. 

But  the  irony  which  applies  the  title  "good" 
to  one  whose  life  outraged  the  social  virtues  is 
sharper  than  that  which  styles  a  good-natured, 
and  yet  a  vindictively  cruel  king  a  "  merry  mon- 
arch." In  both  cases  the  irony  was  unconscious. 
King  Charles  certainly  made  merry  with  his 
favorites  and  they  did  not  dream  of  there  being 
anything  incongruous  in  the  title  as  applied  to 
him.  La  Fontaine  in  his  life-time  was  personally 
known  to  comparatively  few.  Long  after  his 
death,  when  he  was  known  to  posterity  mainly 
through  his  Fables,  he  came  to  be  styled  "Z<?  bon 
La  Fontaine"  with  perfect  sincerity ;  his  readers, 
who  did  not  trouble  themselves  to  look  up  the 
history  of  his  life,  doubtless  imagining  that  a 
man  who  could  write  so  wisely  could  hardly  be 
other  than  "  good," 


no  LA    FONTAINE   "THE   GOOD." 

Let  US  glance  at  his  career  and  judge  for  our- 
selves how  far  he  merits  the  title  which  seems 
almost  to  put  him  into  the  calendar  with  the 
saints. 

Jean  de  La  Fontaine  was  born  July  8,  162 1,  at 
Chateau-Thierry  in  Champagne,  France.  His 
early  education  was  obtained  at  a  small  village 
school  and  later  at  Rheims,  a  town  of  which  he 
often  spoke  fondly  in  later  years.  At  nineteen 
he  was  sent  to  the  seminary  of  Saint  Magloire  to 
study  for  the  priesthood  at  the  suggestion  of  one 
of  the  canons  of  Soissons  who  fancied  he  saw 
in  the  young  man  an  inclination  to  that  profes- 
sion. But  his  indolent  nature  rebelled  against 
the  rigor  of  seminary  rules  and  at  the  end  of 
eighteen  months  he  returned  home.  It  was  no 
doubt  a  fortunate  decision  on  his  part,  for  it  is 
not  easy  to  see  how  one  of  La  Fontaine's  tem- 
perament and  disposition  could  have  reflected 
any  honor  upon  the  calling  of  a  priest.  While 
it  is  of  course  possible  that  he  might  in  this 
profession  have  led  an  upright,  helpful  life  and 


JKAJi    Dli   LA   FONTAINE. 


LA    FONTAINE    "THE   GOOD.  II3 

been  "an  ensample  of  godly  living"  to  his  pa- 
rishioners, the  weight  of  probability  is  much 
against  such  a  supposition. 

When  he  was  twenty-two  his  father,  who  was 
government  Inspector  of  the  Woods  and  Forests, 
relinquished  this  office  to  his  son  whom  he 
married  soon  after  to  Marie  Hericart,  a  young 
woman  of  great  beauty,  and,  as  was  proved  later, 
of  much  sharpness  of  temper.  It  does  not  ap- 
pear that  La  Fontaine  desired  either  the  office 
or  the  wife,  but  his  habitual  indolence  led  him 
to  submit  to  being  guided  rather  than  be  at  the 
trouble  of  remonstrating  or  of  making  an  inde- 
pendent choice.  Knowing  this  we  are  not  sur- 
prised to  read  that  his  Inspectorship,  which  he 
held  for  twenty  years,  was  constantly  neglected 
by  him,  and  that  his  marriage  proved  anything 
but  a  blessing.  After  some  time  he  and  his  wife 
were  separated  by  mutual  consent,  but  he  con- 
tinued to  communicate  with  her  by  letters  at 
intervals. 

The  elder  La  Fontaine  had  all  his  life  been 


114  LA    FONTAINE    "THE   GOOD. 

given  to  verse-making  and  he  vainly  tried  to 
induce  his  son  to  follow  in  the  same  path.  What 
example  and  precept,  however,  failed  to  do,  was 
accomplished  at  last  by  accident.  Dining  with 
some  militar}'  friends  at  Chateau-Thierry,  an 
officer  present  recited  an  ode  of  Malherbe.  La 
Fontaine  listened  to  the  recitation  silent  with 
admiration,  and  on  returning  home  he  set  him- 
self to  committing  to  memory  the  whole  of  the 
volume  which  contained  the  ode,  and  thereafter 
devoted  himself  to  original  versification. 

In  1665  his  first  woik  of  importance  appeared, 
the  Cotites  et  Notivelles  en  Vers.  No  reputable 
author  of  the  present  day  would  venture  to  publish 
a  book  of  the  character  of  this  one,  which  while 
brilliant  was  at  the  same  time  exceedingly  gross. 
However,  it  was  thoroughly  in  keeping  with 
the  taste  of  the  age  and  this  fact  must  be  borne 
in  mind  ere  we  condemn  too  severely  its  author. 
Nothing  can  be  more  intolerant  than  to  judge  the 
character  of  a  man  of  an  earlier  centur)'  by  the 
moral  standards  of  our  own  time.    Until  the  pres- 


LA    FONTAINE    "THE    GOOD."  I15 

ent  century  a  grossness  and  freedom  of  speech 
was  tolerated  in  common  conversation  to  an  ex- 
tent that  we  cannot  now  comprehend.  People 
of  irreproachable  morals  indulged  in  what  would 
at  this  time  be  called  extreme  indelicacy  of  ex- 
pression, with  very  little  idea  of  there  being  any- 
thing reprehensible  in  the  practice. 

In  1667  La  Fontaine  published  a  second  col- 
lection of  Conies  and  in  167 1  a  third.  Twenty- 
one  years  after  the  appearance  of  this  third 
series  La  Fontaine  fell  suddenly  and  danger- 
ously ill.  All  his  life  up  to  this  time  had  been  a 
career  of  pleasure  undisturbed  by  any  serious 
thought  of  what  was  to  come  of  it  all.  In  an 
age  of  speculation  and  'philosophic  inquiry  he 
had  remained  untouched  by  its  spirit.  He  had 
literally  taken  no  thought  for  the  morrow  either 
from  the  standpoint  of  faith  or  of  scepticism. 
He  had  lived  as  the  gay  world  immediately 
around  him  lived,  and  like  the  nominal  Chris- 
tians of  his  time  he  turned  to  religion  only  when 
pleasure  had  no  more  in  store  for  him.     Dur- 


Il6  LA    FONTAINE    "THE   GOOD." 

ing  his  illness  he  was  visited  by  Father  Pou- 
jet,  vicar  of  the  parish  of  St.  Roch  in  Paris, 
who  undertook  to  bring  back  this  careless  but- 
terfly soul  to  the  Church.  Poujet  was  most  as- 
siduous in  his  visits,  and  La  Fontaine,  always 
intellectually  indolent,  was  at  this  time  when 
enfeebled  by  illness  little  disposed  to  question 
seriously  concerning  points  of  faith.  The  result 
is  easy  to  foresee.  La  Fontaine  was  reconciled 
to  the  Church.  The  few  objections  raised  by 
the  poet  were  successfully  met  by  the  priest  who 
as  a  condition  of  the  Church's  forgiveness 
required  that  La  Fontaine  should  make  an  au- 
thentic recantation  of  the  Conies  and  a  formal 
expression  of  his  sorrow  for  having  written  so 
immoral  a  book. 

It  is  by  no  means  probable  that  the  poet  at 
all  realized  the  force  of  Poujet's  objections ;  it 
is  doubtful  if  his  mind  was  so  constituted  that 
he  could  do  so.  He  yielded  nevertheless,  and 
even  burnt  an  unpublished  comedy  of  his  own  to 
which  his  confessor  objected  and  this,  which  he 


LA   FONTAINE    "  THE   GOOD.  II7 

esteemed  his  best  work,  was  no  light  sacrifice 
for  him  to  make. 

To  La  Fontaine's  greatest  work,  the  Fables 
which  bear  his  name.  Father  Poujet  could  for- 
tunately bring  no  objection.  The  year  1668 
was  the  date  of  the  publication  of  the  first  of 
these  in  a  volume  dedicated  to  the  Dauphin  and 
entitled  Fables  Choisies  Mises  en  Vers.  La  Fon- 
taine at  first  seems  to  have  limited  himself  to 
versions  of  the  ^sopian  fables  as  rendered  in 
Latin  verse  by  Phffidrus,  who  flourished  in  the 
time  of  Tiberius ;  but  later  he  drew  from  the  old 
French  fables  of  Marie  de  France  composed  in 
the  thirteenth  century,  as  well  as  from  subse- 
quent narrators  of  fables. 

These  fables  met  with  speedy  recognition,  and 
for  two  hundred  years  and  more  have  never  been 
named  but  with  praise.     Says  a  recent  writer :  — 

"The  fables  have  long  since  passed  out  of  the  region 
of  criticism;  where  copies  or  imitations,  they  are  held  by 
the  assent  of  all  men  to  have  surpassed  their  originals, 
and  where  original,  they  take  the  foremost  rank  amongst 
the  gems  of  European  literature.     The  profoundness  and 


Tl8  LA    FONTAINE    "THE   GOOD." 

at  the  same  time  their  infinite  simplicity,  are  consigned 
unalterably  to  the  author's  credit  in  his  contrasting,  but 
equally  undisputed  titles  of  '  The  Inspired  Innocent '  and 
*  The  Solomon  of  Poets.' " 

A  period  of  ten  years  elapsed  between  the  ap- 
pearance of  the  first  and  second  collections  of 
Fables^  the  latter  being  published  in  1678-79. 
As  in  the  first  collection,  a  number  of  the  fables 
were  dedicated  to  individuals  and  many  of  them 
were  inspired  by  contemporary  events.  At  this 
.time  the  poet  was  at  the  height  of  his  reputation 
and  his  popularity,  except  at  court,  was  very 
great.  For  the  composer  Lully  he  wrote  about 
this  period  the  opera  of  Daphne  which  was  the 
beginning  of  his  efforts  in  dramatic  composition. 

Doubtless  few  poets  of  the  present  day  would 
feel  moved  to  celebrate  in  verse  the  virtues  of 
any  medicinal  agent,  least  of  all  that  of  quinine, 
but  at  the  suggestion  of  the  Duchesse  de  Bouillon 
La  Fontaine  wrote  a  poem  of  two  cantos  on  the 
subject,  called  Le  Quinquina.  The  poem  was 
published  in  1682,  soon  after  the  use  of  quinine 


LA    FONTAINE    "THE  GOOD."  II9 

had  become  popular.  Thirty  years  before  the 
chief  of  the  Jesuits  in  America  had  carried  pow- 
dered quinine  to  Rome  where  it  was  sold  for  a 
long  time  at  most  exorbitant  prices  as  the  poudre 
des  peres  or  poudre  des  Jesiiites.  An  English- 
man named  Talbot  in  1679  introduced  a  mode 
of  infusing  it  in  wine,  and  in  France  it  then 
became  known  as  le  remede  anglais. 

In  1683  he  obtained  the  great  prize  of  literary 
ambition  in  France  —  a  seat  in  the  French 
Academy  —  though  not  without  some  opposition 
in  the  course  of  which  the  immorality  of  the 
Contes  was  repeatedly  urged  as  a  reason  for  his 
non-admission. 

After  his  recovery  from  the  illness  before 
mentioned  he  gathered  into  a  volume  the  fables 
he  had  composed  in  the  years  following  the  issue 
of  the  second  collection  of  apologues,  and  also 
wrote  several  hymns.  But  he  was  now  past 
seventy  years  old  and  there  was  little  more  for 
him  to  do.  His  slender  remaining  strength  was 
devoted  to  the  practices  of  religion  and  it  was 


I20  LA   FONTAINE   "THE  GOOD." 

found  after  his  death  that  the  hair  shirt  of  the 
austere  penitent  had  long  been  worn  next  his 
skin.  His  death  occurred  on  April  13,  1695,  at 
the  house  of  one  of  his  friends,  M.  d'Hervart, 
and  he  was  buried  beside  his  friend  Molifere  in 
the  parish  churchyard  of  St.  Joseph. 

In  some  respects  La  Fontaine  remained  a 
child  to  the  hour  of  his  death.  He  was  incapa- 
ble of  taking  care  of  himself  in  ordinary  affairs 
of  life  and  was  always  dependent  upon  one  pro- 
tector or  another.  He  was  almost  entirely  with- 
out resentment  and  the  simplicity  of  his  nature 
presents  a  refreshing  contrast  to  the  duplicity 
of  many  of  his  contemporaries.  That  in  an  age 
when  virtue  was  the  exception  to  the  general  rule 
La  Fontaine  was  conspicuous  for  his  violations 
of  moral  obligations  may  be  accounted  for  by 
the  fact  that  his  was  a  nature  which  found  it 
difficult  to  take  account  of  moral  distinctions. 
He  seemed  to  have  been  born  with  very  clouded 
moral  perceptions,  if  indeed  he  can  be  said  to 
have  had  in  some  directions  any  moral  sense  at 


LA    FONTAINE    "THE   GOOD.  121 

all.  His  native  indolence  made  vice  not  only 
easier  to  him  than  virtue,  but  with  his  consti- 
tutionally perverted  sense  of  right  and  wrong 
often  made  it  appear  the  only  natural  course  to 
pursue.  This  does  not  clear  him  from  blame, 
for  some  degree  of  free  agency  he  certainly  pos- 
sessed, but  after  all  is  said  that  can  be  urged 
against  him  there  remains  much  to  his  credit.  If 
he  were  not  "good"  in  the  ordinary  acception 
of  the  term  he  possessed  some  desirable  attri- 
butes of  goodness.  We  read  of  him  that  he  was 
"  unafifected,  truthful  and  compassionate ;  he 
stood  firmly  by  his  friend  in  trouble,  and  was 
invariably  patient  and  forgiving."  He  was 
capable  of  strong  attachments,  and  in  one  very 
notable  instance  stood  manfully  by  the  friend 
who  had  once  befriended  him,  the  Minister 
Fouquet,  in  the  disgrace  that  befell  his  former 
patron,  and  did  much  to  allay  popular  indigna- 
tion against  that  fallen  dignitary. 

In  society  his  absent-mindedness  became  al- 
most  a   proverb   and   his   manners   were   very 


122  LA    FONTAIXE    "THE    GOOD.' 

frequently,  taciturn,  even  boorish.  In  discus- 
sions he  never  listened  to  his  opponents  and 
talked  on,  hearing  only  the  sound  of  his  own 
voice.  On  one  occasion  in  a  conversation  on 
dramatic  art  La  Fontaine  strongly  condemned 
the  custom  of  stage  "  asides,"  saying  that  nothing 
could  be  more  absurd  than  to  suppose  that  an 
actor  could  be  heard  in  the  gallery  and  not  by 
people  beside  him.  The  discussion  became  a 
heated  one,  and  the  poet's  voice  rose  high  above 
all  the  rest.  He  did  not  know  that  all  the  while 
Despreaux,  one  of  the  company,  was  inces- 
santly calling  him  aloud  all  kinds  of  names  — 
"La  Fontaine  is  a  scoundrel,  a  blockhead,  a 
calf,  an  owl,"  till  every  one  around  him  was 
laughing.  On  his  then  inquiring  what  the  mat- 
ter was,  Despreaux  said  :  "  Here  am  I  calling  you 
the  hardest  names  I  can  think  of  and  you  don't 
hear  me,  although  I  am  near  enough  to  touch 
your  elbow ;  and  yet  you  think  it  extraordinary 
that  one  actor  should  not  be  able  to  hear  an- 
other who  may  be  ten  paces  away  from  him." 


LA    FONTAINE    "THE   GOOD.  123 

One  of  the  most  serious  indictments  against 
La  Fontaine  is  his  neglect  of  his  son.  The  youtli 
was  educated  by  a  friend  of  La  Fontaine's,  and 
from  the  time  of  his  removal  from  his  father's 
notice  the  poet  seems  to  have  forgotten  him 
completely,  never  inquiring  for  or  alluding  to 
him.  After  the  youth's  college  course  was  com- 
pleted a  meeting  was  arranged  between  the 
father  and  son  who  had  not  met  for  nearly  six 
years.  The  occasion  was  a  dinner,  and  after  it 
was  over  La  Fontaine's  friend  asked  him  what 
he  thought  of  the  young  man  who  had  just  left 
them.  The  poet  replied  that  he  seemed  modest 
and  quite  well  informed  for  his  age. 

"  It  is  your  own  son,"  said  his  friend. 

"Ah,  indeed,"  replied  La  Fontaine,  "I  am 
glad  to  hear  it."  Then  he  suffered  the  matter  to 
drop  as  if  it  were  a  trifling  episode  of  a  pleasant 
nature  which  had  merely  served  its  turn. 

It  is  a  nature  full  of  contradictions  —  this  of  the 
great  French  fabulist  —  and  it  is  open  to  much 
well-deserved  blame,  yet  there  is  not  a  little  in  it  to 


124  LA    FONTAINE   "THE   GOOD." 

attract,  and  in  thinking  of  him  it  is  well  to  bear 
in  mind  the  words  of  his  dear  friend  Maucroix : 

"  We  have  been  friends  for  more  than  fifty  years,  and 
I  thank  God  for  having  allowed  the  extreme  friendship  I 
bore  him  to  continue  up  to  a  pretty  good  old  age  without 
interruption  or  coolness,  as  I  can  say  that  I  have  ever 
loved  him  with  affection  as  much  the  last  day  as  the  first. 
May  God  in  his  mercy,  take  his  soul  into  his  holy  rest ! 
His  was  the  sincerest  and  most  candid  heart  I  ever  knew. 
Never  any  disguise.  I  do  not  know  if  he  ever  told  a  lie 
in  his  life." 


CHAPTER   VIII. 

EDOUARD    RENE   LEFEBRE   LABOULAYE. 

"  He  who  gives  to  the  world  one  pure  and  good  story,  the 
aim  of  which  is  to  sow  seeds  of  virtue,  a  love  of  right,  and 
that  poetic  trust  in  the  zvor  kings  of  a  wise  and  good  God,  he 
who  sitcccssfuUy  does  all  this  is  a  very  great  man,  whose 
name  is  to  be  remembered,  who  should  be  thanked  and  praised, 
and  one  —  and  to  such  this  truth  will  be  more  than  that  title 
or  honor  —  one  of  those  whom  we  should  upon  our  bended 
knees  thank  God  for  having  made." 

EDOUARD  LABOULAYE,  of  whom  the 
above  was  written,  was  for  more  than 
one  reason  the  French  writer  best  beloved  in 
America  of  all  the  people  of  his  time.  In  the 
early  days  of  our  great  Civil  War  when  the  final 
issue  appeared  doubtful,  or  the  dissolution  of 
the  Union  seemed  impending  and  foreign  na- 
tions confidently  expected  its  downfall,  there 
125 


126       EDOUARD    RENE    LEFEBRE    LABOULAVB. 

were  a  few  clear-sighted  men  in  England  and 
France  who  saw  deeply  enough  into  the  causes 
of  the  conflict  to  understand  them  and  whose 
active  sympathy  for  the  Union  never  wavered. 
Foremost  among  these  men  in  England  was 
John  Bright ;  in  France  the  voice  of  Edouard 
Laboulaye  rang  clearest  in  our  behalf.  It  is 
for  this  that  his  memory  is  reverenced  by  an  older 
generation  of  Americans ;  it  is  as  the  author  of 
Abdallah  and  the  delightful  fairy  tales  called  Les 
Contes  Bleus  that  he  is  beloved  by  a  younger. 

He  was  born  in  Paris,  January  i8,  1811,  and 
as  in  early  youth  he  showed  marked  talent  for 
disputation  he  began  the  study  of  law  and  juris- 
prudence at  an  early  age.  Of  an  enthusiastic 
temperament,  he  threw  his  heart  into  the  pursuit 
and  became  known  among  his  fellow  students 
as  an  indefatigable  worker.  When  but  twenty- 
eight  he  published  a  famous  legal  work,  TJieLaw 
of  Real  Property  in  Europe,  a  book  which  shows 
in  its  preparation  great  research  and  which  gave 
him  a  reputation  as  a  scholar.     It  received  the 


EDOUARD    RENE    LEFEBRE    LABOULAYE.       1 27 

honor  of  being  "crowned,"  or  formally  approved 
by  the  French  Academy.  In  1842  he  published 
an  Essay  on  the  Life  and  Doctrines  of  FredMc  de 
Savigny,  the  great  modern  jurist  of  Germany, 
and  in  the  following  year  an  elaborate  treatise 
upon  the  Civil  and  Political  Condition  of  Women 
from  the  Time  of  the  Rotnans.  This  latter  work 
and  a  learned  essay  in  1845  upon  the  Criminal 
Laws  of  the  Liomans,  both  received  prizes  from 
the  Academy.  Not  far  from  this  time  he  was 
elected  a  member  of  the  Academy,  and  in  1849 
he  became  Professor  of  Comparative  Legislation 
in  the  College  de  France. 

Laboulaye  was  always  an  admirer  of  Anglo- 
Saxon  institutions  and  it  was  in  consequence  of 
this,  no  doubt,  that  he  was  led  to  write  in  1855 
and  1856  his  Political  History  of  the  United  States. 
About  this  time  he  translated  into  French  the 
works  of  Dr.  Channing,  and  wrote  Studies  on 
Germany  and  the  Slavonian  Countries  and  an  im- 
portant work  on  Religious  Liberty.  Of  his 
books  Paris  in  America  has  been  perhaps  the 


128       EDOUARD    RENE    LEFEBRE   LABOULAYE. 

most  widely  read.  It  appeared  in  1863,  was 
speedily  translated  and  hardly  a  circulating 
library  in  this  country  was  then  without  it.  He 
was  gifted  with  a  delightful  humor  to  which  he 
gave  full  play  in  this  entertaining  allegory.  In 
this  year  he  published  also  a  noted  work  upon 
the  Limits  of  the  State.  In  1866-67  appeared 
his  Memoirs  of  Franklin,  and  in  1872  Political 
Letters. 

In  the  midst  of  the  labor  given  to  these  grave 
works,  to  his  daily  lectures  in  the  College  de 
France  and  to  many  duties,  this  busiest  of  men 
found  time  to  write  in  1859  the  beautiful  story 
of  Abdallah,  which  fascinates  every  child  who 
reads  it.  Hardly  less  charming  are  the  fairy 
tales  known  as  Les  Contes  Bleus^  which  were 
written  in  1862.  His  Prince  Carriche  which  is 
not  so  well  "known  as  it  deserves  to  be,  was  given 
to  the  world  in  1868. 

As  regards  romance,  adventures  and  dra- 
matic actions  and  endings,  many  of  Laboulaye's 
fairy  tales  might  be  given  a  place  in  the    Thou- 


EDOUARD    RENE   LEFEBRE    LABOULAYE. 


EDOUARD    RENE    LEFEBRE    LABOULAYE.       131 

$and  and  One  Nights  Entertainments,  while  in 
beauty  of  style  and  delicate  humor  and  grace 
and  noble  sentiment  there  is  nothing  at  all  in 
the  Arabian  Nights  with  which  to  compare  them. 
"  Yvon  and  Finette,"  the  first  story  in  Les 
Contes  Bleiis,  opens  in  this  entertaining  style  : 

"  Once  upon  a  time  there  lived  in  Brittany  a  noble  lord, 
who  was  called  the  Baron  Kerver.  His  manor-house  was 
the  most  beautiful  in  the  province.  It  was  a  great  Gothic 
castle,  with  a  groined  roof  and  walls,  covered  with  carv- 
ings that  looked,  at  a  distance  like  a  vine  climbing  an 
arbor.  On  the  first  floor  six  stained  glass  balcony  win- 
dows looked  out  on  each  side  toward  the  rising  and  the 
setting  sun. 

"  In  the  morning,  when  the  baron,  mounted  on  his  dun 
mare,  went  forth  into  the  forest,  followed  by  his  tall  grey- 
hounds, he  saw  at  each  window  one  of  his  daughters,  with 
prayer-book  in  hand,  praying  for  the  house  of  Kerver, 
and  who  with  their  fair  curls,  blue  eyes,  and  clasped 
hands,  might  have  been  taken  for  six  Madonnas  in  an 
azure  niche. 

"  At  evening,  when  the  sun  declined  and  the  baron 
returned  homeward,  after  riding  round  his  domains,  he 
perceived  from  afar,  in  the  windows  looking  toward  the 
west,  six  sons,  with  dark  -locks  and  eager  gaze,  the  hope 
and  pride  of  the  family,  that  might  have  been  taken  for 
six  sculptured  knights  at  the  portal  of  a  church." 


f32       EDOUARD    RENE    LEFEBRE    LABOULAYE. 

A  Story  with  such  a  delightful  beginning  as 
this  must  surely  have  as  fascinating  a  sequel. 
And  so  it  proves.  Yvon,  the  thirteenth  child  of 
the  Baron  Kerver,  at  the  very  threshold  of  his 
adventures,  becomes  the  servant  of  an  exacting 
old  giant,  and  but  for  Finette,  the  daughter  of  a 
fairy  and  the  slave  of  the  giant,  is  in  a  fair  way 
never  to  get  beyond  the  threshold.  Finette, 
however,  proves  to  be  a  most  remarkable  young 
woman  and  discloses  to  Yvon  many  ways  of 
outwitting  the  old  giant.  After  Finette  had 
provided  herself  with  three  golden  bullets,  two 
silver  ones,  and  one  more  of  copper,  they  leave 
the  service  of  the  giant,  but  it  takes  all  the  mys- 
terious power  of  the  silver  and  copper  bullets  to 
get  them  fairly  out  of  his  clutches.  After  this 
Yvon  falls  under  the  spell  of  a  sorceress  and 
forgets  all  about  Finette  who  goes  through  a 
surprising  list  of  adventures.  At  one  time 
when  a  seneschal  wished  to  marry  her  she  fled 
from  him  into  the  stable  and  hid  behind  the 
cow. 


EDOUARD  RENE  LEFEBRE  LABOULAYE.   133 

"  '  You  shall  not  escape  me,  sorceress  ! '  cried  the  senes- 
chal; and  with  a  grasp  like  that  of  Hercules  he  seized  the 
cow  by  the  tail,  and  dragged  her  out  of  the  stable. 

"  '  Abracadabra  ! '  cried  Finette.  '  May  the  cow's  tail 
hold  on,  villain,  and  may  you  hold  on  the  cow's  tail  till 
you  both  have  been  around  the  world  together.' " 

And  behold  the  cow  darted  off  like  lightning, 
dragging  the  unhappy  seneschal  after  her. 
Nothing  stopped  the  two  inseparable  comrades ; 
they  rushed  over  mountain  and  valley,  crossed 
marshes,  rivers,  quagmires  and  brakes,  glided 
over  the  seas  without  sinking,  were  frozen  in 
Siberia,  and  scorched  in  Africa,  climbed  the 
Himalayas,  descended  Mont  Blanc,  and  at 
length,  after  thirty-six  hours  of  a  journey  the 
like  of  which  had  never  been  seen,  both  stopped 
out  of  breath  in  the  public  square  of  the  village. 
A  young  woman  who  can  send  off  a  suitor  in 
this  style  is  certainly  a  person  to  make  herself 
respected  and  to  inspire  beholders  with  the  feel- 
ing that  she  can  do  pretty  much  as  she  likes, 
and  we  are  quite  prepared  to.hear  that  she  tri- 
umphs over  all  obstacles  and  by  the  aid  of  the 


134   EDOUARD  RENE  LEFEBRE  LABOULAYE.    . 

last  golden  bullet  reaches  Yvon  and  lives  with 
him  happily  ever  after. 

The  other  tales  in  Les  Contes  Bleus  are  written 
in  this  happy  fluent  style ;  but  Abdullah  is  con- 
ceived in  a  graver  manner.  It  is  the  story  of 
the  search  for  the  four-leaved  shamrock  whose 
possessor  would  lack  nothing.  How  the  sacred 
plant  was  at  last  won  is  thus  told  : 

"  While  Abdallah  admired  these  marvels  in  silence,  an 
angel  descended  towards  him  ;  not  the  terrible  Azrael,  but 
the  messenger  of  celestial  favors,  the  good  and  lovely 
Gabriel.  He  held  in  his  hand  a  tiny  diamond  leaf;  but, 
small  as  it  was,  it  shed  a  light  that  illumined  the  whole 
desert.  His  soul  was  intoxicated  with  joy;  the  son  of 
Yusuf  ran  to  meet  the  angel.  He  paused  in  terror  ;  at  his 
feet  was  a  vast  gulf,  full  of  fire  and  smoke,  bridged  only 
by  an  immense  arch  made  of  a  blade  of  steel  which  was 
finer  than  a  hair  and  sharper  than  a  razor. 

'*  The  Bedouin  was  already  seized  with  despair,  when  he 
felt  himself  supported  and  urged  on  by  an  invisible  power. 
Hafiz  and  Leila  were  on  either  side  of  him.  He  did  not 
see  them ;  he  dared  not  turn  for  fear  of  awaking;  but  he 
felt  their  presence,  he  heard  their  soothing  words  ;  both 
supported  and  carried  him  along  with  them.  '  In  the 
name  of  the  clement  and  merciful  God  ! '  he  cried.  At 
these   words,  which   are   the   key   to   Paradise,   he  was 


t         EDOUARD    RENE   LEFEBRE    LABOULAYB.       135 

transported  like  lightning  to  the  other  side  of  the  bridge. 
The  angel  was  there,  holding  out  the  mysterious  flower. 
The  young  man  seized  it.  At  last  the  four-leaved  sham- 
rock was  his,  the  ardor  of  desire  was  quenched,  the  veil 
of  the  body  was  lifted,  the  hour  of  recompense  had  struck. 
Gabriel  turned  his  eyes  toward  the  bottom  of  the  garden, 
where  divine  majesty  was  enthroned.  Abdallah's  glance 
followed  that  of  the  angel,  and  the  eternal  splendor  flashed 
in  his  face.  At  this  lustre  which  no  eye  can  endure,  he 
fell  with  his  face  to  the  ground,  uttering  a  loud  cry. 

"  This  cry  man's  ear  has  never  heard,  man's  voice  has 
never  repeated.  The  delicious  joy  of  the  shipwrecked 
mariner  who  escapes  the  fury  of  the  waves,  the  delight 
of  the  bridegroom  who  presses  his  beloved  for  the  first 
time  to  his  heart,  the  transports  of  the  mother  who  finds 
the  son  for  whom  she  has  wept  —  all  the  joys  of  earth  are 
naught  but  mourning  and  sorrow  to  the  cry  of  happiness 
which  rose  from  the  soul  of  Abdallah." 

The  works  I  have  named  by  no  means  com- 
prise all  of  Laboulaye's  writings.  He  was  a 
constant  contributor  to  newspapers  and  periodi- 
cals and  from  time  to  time  put  forth  pamphlets 
on  various  subjects.  Among  these  was  one 
which  was  almost  as  popular  in  the  United 
States  as  the  famous  Paris  in  America,  and 
which  bore  the  title  Why  the  North  cannot  accept 


136       EDOUARD    RENE    LEFEBRE    LABOULAYE. 

of  Separation.  It  was  a  judicious  piece  of  rea- 
soning and  did  much  good. 

"No  American,"  writes  Mr.  John  Bigelow, 
"  was  probably  more  convinced  than  he  was 
that  nowhere  in  this  world  outside  of  the  United 
States  could  be  found  such  durable  guarantees 
to  the  people,  of  the  right  to  life,  liberty  and 
the  pursuit  of  happiness.  He  thought  it  there- 
fore a  matter  of  world-wide  concern  that  our 
republic  should  prove  its  capacity  to  deal  with 
the  enemies  of  its  own  household.  He  was  one 
of  the  few  conspicuous  Frenchmen  —  perhaps 
beside  M.  de  Tocqueville,  it  would  be  difficult 
to  name  a  third  —  who  knew  where  the  sover- 
eignty of  the  people  began,  and  he  never  ceased 
to  deplore  the  inability  of  his  countrymen  to 
recognize  the  limitations  of  the  powers  of  the 
State  as  taught  by  the  fathers  of  the  republic." 

In  1869  and  1870  when  Napoleon  in.  was 
laying  his  plans  for  the  war  with  Germany  he 
succeeded  in  attaching  to  his  cause  a  number 
of  the  prominent  single-minded  patriotic  French- 


EDOUARD    RENE    LEFEBRE    LABOULAYE.       137 

men  of  the  time,  among  whom  were  such  men 
as  Prevost  Paradol,  Emile  Ollivier  and  Edouard 
Laboulaye.  Trusting  in  the  good  faith  of  the 
Emperor  Laboulaye  supported  the  famous  Ple- 
biscite of  1870,  and  like  the  others  he  found 
his  confidence  had  been  misplaced.  Like  other 
Frenchmen  of  that  time  he  believed  in  the  all- 
conquering  power  of  French  armies,  and  when 
France  was  subdued  by  the  armies  of  the  Ger- 
mans, and  a  humiliating  peace  followed,  it  not 
unnaturally  filled  his  soul  with  bitterness.  To 
him  Bismarck  was  always  thereafter  "  the  incar- 
nation of  vandalic  barbarism,"  and  the  pleas- 
ant relations  he  had  hitherto  held  with  many 
German  literary  men  were  never  again  imbued 
with  the  old-time  cordiality.  Yet  under  the 
Republic  his  merits  received  more  public  recog- 
nition than  they  would  have  ever  gained  under 
the  Empire.  In  187 1  he  became  a  member 
of  the  National  Assembly,  in  1873  a  Director  of 
the  College  de  France^  and  in  1875  a  Senator  for 
life. 


138      EDOUARD    RENE   LEFEBRE    LABOULAYE. 

Laboulaye  sympathized  with  all  important  re- 
forms and  was  an  ardent  believer  in  the  absolute 
freedom  of  education.  He  was  a  supporter  of 
the  co-operative  principles  and  urged  the  es- 
tablishment of  great  libraries  for  the  working 
classes.  But  in  spite  of  his  interest  in  all  move- 
ments for  the  improvement  of  his  race  he  was 
not  in  these  later  years  the  centre  or  source  of 
any  great  public  influence.  He  never  became 
a  politician  in  any  but  the  highest  sense.  His 
standards  of  right  were  too  lofty  to  allow  him 
ever  to  stoop  to  trickery  or  double  dealing  of  any 
sort.  Perhaps  it  was  for  this  reason  that  he 
failed  to  achieve  the  political  influence  that  no 
doubt  he  would  have  enjoyed  wielding,  but  his 
failure  was  of  that  character  which  is  success  if 
we  view  it  aright. 

As  a  lecturer  he  was  greatly  admired.  His 
daily  lectures  in  the  College  de  France  lasted  one 
hour  and  his  class-room  was  always  crowded. 
So  eager  was  the  competition  for  seats  that 
many  who  came  to  listen   would  wait  through 


EDOUARD    RENE    LEFEBRE    I.ABOULAYE.       1 39 

the  hour  of  the  preceding  lecturer  in  order  to 
be  sure  of  hearing  Laboulaye.  "  All  sorts  and 
conditions  of  men "  were  among  his  hearers. 
The  roughest  men  were  shoulder  to  shoulder 
with  scholars  and  exquisites.  In  the  throng 
women  were  often  present,  many  drawn  there 
merely  from  curiosity,  but  others  from  a  sincere 
desire  to  profit  by  the  lecture.  He  was  a  fluent 
and  elegant  speaker  and  his  discourses  sparkled 
with  humor.  Says  one  American  woman  who 
often  listened  to  him  in  1869  : 

"  The  subject  was  Montesquieu's  Writings.  M.  Labou- 
laye held  in  his  hand  a  volume  of  the  Esprit  des  Lois  and 
read  from  it,  stopping  continually  to  elucidate,  or  defend 
sentiments  or  opinions  therein  contained.  Indeed  Mon- 
tesquieu was  only  a  text  from  which  to  preach  upon  every 
known  subject :  religion,  politics,  manners,  literature  and 
art.  Now  and  then  the  lecturer  would  condescend  to 
launch  a  satire  against  the  airy  nothingness  of  a  lady's 
bonnet,  the  glazed  hat  of  a  Paris  coachman,  the  demoli- 
tions of  Haussmann  —  in  short,  he  touched  upon  many  a 
subject  never  dreamed  of  in  Montesquieu's  philosophy. 
No  lecture  ever  passed  without  some  allusion  to  our  coun- 
try in  glaring  and  flattering  contrast  to  every  other.  .  . 
It  did  not  surprise  us  to  learn  that  the  Emperor  had  for- 


140      EDOUARD    RENE    LEFEBRE    LABOULAYE. 

bidden  M.  Laboulaye  to  lecture  any  more  upon  American 
politics  at  the  College  de  France.  The  conclusions  of  the 
audience  was  too  quickly  drawn,  and  the  applause  undis- 
guised, but  it  will  make  no  difference  with  Laboulaye, 
for  he  can  teach  what  lessons  he  chooses  from  the  poli- 
tics of  Otaheite." 

It  was  a  cherished  hope  with  him  to  visit 
America  and  lecture  in  French  upon  the  topics 
most  dear  to  him,  but  the  political  events  pre- 
ceding the  Franco-Prussian  War  compelled  him 
to  relinquish  the  idea  and  the  fitting  opportunity 
never  afterwards  presented  itself  to  him.  Had 
he  carried  out  his  intention  there  is  no  doubt 
that  he  would  have  received  one  of  the  most 
cordial  welcomes  ever  accorded  to  any  of  his 
countrymen.  Americans  owe  his  memory  a 
debt  of  gratitude  not  easily  repaid.  For  years 
he  was  an  untiring  advocate  of  the  best  things 
in  American  institutions  and  his  strongest  ef- 
forts were  devoted  to  giving  his  countrymen  an 
intelligent  comprehension  of  American  princi- 
ples. To  his  articles  and  influence  is  due  the 
fact  that  \)a&  Journal  des  Debuts,  one  of  the  most 


KDOUARt)    RENE    LErEBRE    LABOULAYE.       14I 

powerful  journals  in  France  if  not  in  all  Europe, 
took  a  decided  stand  in  favor  of  the  Union 
cause  during  our  Civil  War. 

In  person  Laboulaye  was  about  five  feet  seven 
inches  in  height,  of  pleasant  manners  and 
generally  attractive  appearance.  His  forehead 
was  high  and  large,  and  his  lips  and  chin  full 
and  prominent,  while  his  small  eyes  sparkled 
with  humor  and  kindliness.  His  dark  olive 
complexion  was  seen  to  fullest  advantage,  for 
he  wore  no  beard,  and  his  thin  brown  hair  was 
brushed  smoothly  upon  his  head.  He  was 
usually  dressed  in  a  black  frock  coat  buttoned 
close  to  the  chin,  which  gave  him  something  of 
a  clerical  appearance.  His  health  was  always 
frail  and  this  fact  withdrew  him  somewhat  from 
the  world  in  general.  Says  one  who  knew  him 
well :  "  He  was  a  man  of  most  exemplary  char- 
acter and  life.  He  had  no  habits  for  which  his 
admirers  had  to  apologize.  He  lived  as  ever  in 
his  great  Task-master's  eye,  nor  was  his  name 
ever   associated    with    any   cause,    business   or 


142       EDOUARD    RENE   LEFEB&£  LABOULAYE. 

enterprise  which  did  not  reflect  back  upon  him 
all  the  dignity  he  conferred  upon  it." 

It  is  not  said  that  he  made  no  mistakes  or 
committed  no  errors  of  judgment.  No  one  is 
infallible,  and  it  has  sometimes  happened  that 
the  gravest  mistakes,  those  fraught  with  the 
most  terrible  consequences,  have  been  made  by 
the  best  of  men  ;  but  it  is  told  of  him  with  per- 
fect truth  that  he  was  faithful  to  his  highest 
convictions  of  right,  and  that  he  was  never 
swayed  from  them  by  considerations  of  policy. 
He  rightly  deserves  our  reverence  not  only 
because  he  was  the  author  of  "  one  pure  and 
good  story  the  aim  of  which  is  to  sow  seeds  of 
virtue,"  but  because  he  was  a  man,  and  such 
men  are  not  many,  of  whom  it  could  with  perfect 
truth  be  said  —  and  though  it  was  a  simple 
thing  it  was  a  grand  thing  to  say : 

"  He  had  no  habits  for  which  his  admirers  had 
to  apologize  !  " 


CHAPTER  IX. 

HANS    CHRISTIAN    ANDERSEN,     "THE     GOLDSMITH 
OF   THE    NORTH." 

WASHINGTON  IRVING  wrote  once  of 
Oliver  Goldsmith:  "To  be  the  most 
beloved  of  English  writers,  what  a  distinction, 
that,  for  a  man  ! " 

The  Story-teller  of  Copenhagen  is  perhaps 
dearer  to  the  hearts  of  countless  young  readers 
than  any  other  writer  who  ever  lived.  And  what 
a  distinction  that  is  for  any  man  to  win  ! 

Goldsmith  and  Andersen  in  certain  impor- 
tant particulars  were  much  alike.  Both  were 
simple  and  childlike  in  their  natures;  both 
were  excessively  vain  —  Goldsmith  was  as  fond 
of  fine  clothes  and  as  proud  of  appearing  in 
them  as  any  peacock  of  showing  its  plumage, 
143 


144  HANS    CHRISTIAN    ANDERSEN. 

and  Andersen  imagined  himself  the  centre  of 
everyone's  thoughts  —  both  were  plain  in  feature 
even  to  positive  ugliness,  and  both  possessed  a 
simplicity  of  literary  style  which  goes  directly 
to  the  hearts  of  their  readers. 

In  regard  to  the  vanity  of  these  two  men  it 
should  be  said  that  it  was  of  the  most  harmless 
character.  Goldsmith  never  was  envious  of 
another's  success,  Andersen  never  let  his  self- 
esteem  manifest  itself  in  any  way  to  the  injury 
of  another.  The  Danish  writer  was  probably 
the  most  conceited  man  of  his  time,  but  it  was 
a  simple-hearted  vanity  which  he  could  no  more 
help,  at  least  in  later  life,  than  a  hen  can  help 
letting  the  whole  poultry-yard  know  when  she 
has  laid  an  egg.  For  many  years  his  was  the 
most  familiar  figure  in  Copenhagen.  Says  one 
writer  of  Andersen :  — 

"  High  and  low,  rich  and  poor,  he  belonged  to  all.  If 
he  went  out  for  a  walk,  everyone  saluted  him  ;  if  he  visited 
the  theater,  all  present  welcomed  him  ;  children  worshiped 
him,  claimed  him  as  belonging  peculiarly  to  them ;  every 


HANS   CHRISTIAN    ANDERSEN.  145 

household  reserved  for  him  a  warm  corner  by  the  stove ; 
not  a  family,  from  the  king  to  the  peasant,  but  had  a  knife 
and  fork  and  a  seat  at  the  table  ready  for  him." 

It  would  be  a  rare  nature  indeed  that  such 
an  amount  of  adulation  would  not  affect,  yet 
Andersen's  sweetness  of  disposition  was  such 
that  it  did  not  make  him  arrogant  or  selfish ;  it 
simply  distorted  his  vision  and  made  him  look 
at  the  world  in  general  through  the  meshes  of  a 
net-work  composed  of  the  letters  of  his  own 
name. 

It  must  not,  however,  be  imagined  that  because 
Andersen  was  so  universally  beloved  by  his  coun- 
trymen that  they  regarded  him  as  the  greatest 
glory  of  their  literature.  On  the  contrary  the 
Danes  have  always  been  puzzled  to  account  for 
the  admiration  with  which  he  is  regarded  in 
other  lands  to  the  neglect  of  several  other 
Danish  writers  whom  they  rightfully  regard  as 
superior  to  him.  But  the  reason  is  not  so  far 
to  seek.  The  simplicity  of  his  style  made  trans- 
lation comparatively  easy.     English  readers  first 


146  HANS  Christian  andersen. 

made  his  acquaintance  through  the  translations 
of  his  works  by  Mrs.  Mary  Howitt,  herself  a 
delightful  writer  for  young  people,  and  excellent 
Swedish  and  German  versions  appeared  very 
early  in  his  literary  career.  Then,  too,  people 
who  made  acquaintance  with  his  works  in  their 
childhood  have  never  been  able  to  forget  their 
love  for  the  teller  of  fairy  tales,  and  have  re- 
garded his  novels  with  much  the  same  feeling  of 
uncritical  admiration.  To  the  majority  of  read- 
ers Andersen  is  the  only  Danish  writer,  a  state 
of  things  as  unfair  to  Denmark's  other  great 
authors  as  harmful  to  the  fame  of  Andersen 
himself.  But  even  when  the  just  claims  of  his 
contemporaries  have  been  satisfied  nuich,  very 
much,  remains  to  be  grateful  for  in  the  genius 
of  Hans  Andersen 

He  was  born  in  Odense,  the  chief  town  on 
the  Danish  island  of  Funen,  on  April  2,  1805. 
His  father  was  a  shoemaker  by  trade,  and  a 
person  of  a  melancholy  disposition,  a  trait  which 
at  times  showed  itself  in  the  character  of  his 


HANS    CHRISTIAN    ANDERSEN.  1 49 

famous   son.     Says  Andersen   in   The  Story  of 
My  Life :  — 

"  During  the  first  day  of  my  existence  my  father  is  said 
to  have  sat  by  the  bed  and  read  aloud  in  Holberg,  but  I 
cried  all  the  time.  '  Wilt  thou  go  to  sleep,  or  listen 
quietly  ? '  it  is  reported  that  my  father  asked  in  joke  ;  but 
I  still  cried  on  ;  and  even  in  the  church,  when  I  was  taken 
to  be  baptized,  I  cried  so  loudly  that  the  preacher,  who 
was  a  passionate  man,  said, '  The  younker  screams  like  a 
cat ! '  which  words  my  mother  never  forgot.  A  poor 
emigrant,  Gomar,  who  stood  as  godfather,  consoled  her 
in  the  meantime  by  saying  that  the  louder  I  cried  as  a 
child,  all  the  more  beautifully  should  I  sing  when  I  grew 
older." 

The  prophecy  so  early  made  was  abundantly 
realized  in  later  years.  To  the  poor  shoemaker's 
son  was  given  a  singing  voice  that  has  echoed 
round  the  world  and  gathered  half  the  children 
in  Christendom  about  his  knees.  It  is  pleasant 
to  read  of  those  early  years  in  Odense.  One 
of  the  very  first  events  that  he  recalls  is  the 
visit  of  the  Spaniards  to  Funen  when  he  was 
but  three  years  old.  A  Spanish  soldier  took 
him  up  in  his  arms,  danced  him  on  his  knees 


150  HANS    CHRISTIAN    ANDERSEN. 

and  kissed  him  with  tears  in  his  eyes,  mindful, 
no  doubt,  of  some  little  Alfonso  or  Benita  left 
behind  in  far-off  Spain.  Once  when  he  was  six 
years  old  he  stood  one  evening  with  his  mother 
and  her  neighbors  in  St.  Knut's  churchyard, 
gazing  at  the  great  comet  which  blazed  its  path- 
way across  the  sky,  and  the  sight  of  which  made 
a  deep  impression  upon  his  childish  mind.  He 
writes  thus  of  an  incident  of  his  childhood :  — 

"  Sometimes  during  the  harvest,  my  mother  went  into 
the  field  to  glean.  I  accompanied  her,  and  we  went  like 
Ruth  in  the  Bible,  to  glean  in  the  rich  fields  of  Boaz. 
One  day  we  went  to  a  place  the  bailiff  of  which  was 
well  known  for  being  a  man  of  a  rude  and  savage  dis- 
position. We  saw  him  coming  with  a  huge  whip  in  his 
hand,  and  my  mother  and  all  the  others  ran  away.  I  had 
wooden  shoes  on  my  bare  feet,  and  in  my  haste  I  lost 
these  and  the  thorns  pricked  me  so  that  I  could  not  run, 
and  thus  I  was  left  behind  and  alone.  The  man  came 
up  and  lifted  his  whip  to  strike  me,  when  I  looked  him 
in  the  face  and  involuntarily  exclaimed  — '  How  dare  you 
strike  me,  when  God  can  see  it .' ' " 

He  was  very  young  when  he  first  went  to  the 
theater  with  his  parents,  and  an  odd  figure  the 


HANS    CHRISTIAN    ANDERSEN.  151 

homely  little  fellow  must  have  cut  from  his  own 
account  of  himself :  — 

"  As  to  my  dress,  I  was  rather  spruce ;  an  old  woman 
altered  my  father's  clothes  for  me;  my  mother  would 
fasten  three  or  four  large  pieces  of  silk  with  pins  on  my 
breast,  and  that  had  to  do  for  vests  ;  a  large  kerchief  was 
tied  round  my  neck  with  a  mighty  bow ;  my  head  was 
washed  with  soap  and  my  hair  curled,  and  then  I  was  in 
all  my  glory.  In  that  attire  I  went  with  my  parents  for 
the  first  time  to  the  theater." 

The  first  exclamation  of  the  future  poet  and 
romancer  on  entering  the  theater  was  sufficiently 
prosaic,  and  was  to  the  effect  that  if  he  had  as 
many  casks  of  butter  at  home  as  there  were 
people  in  the  theater  that  he  could  eat  quantities 
of  butter.  His  imagination  was  soon  stimulated, 
however,  and  as  he  could  go  but  seldom  to  the 
theater  he  procured  a  programme  every  day 
from  the  person  who  distributed  the  playbills, 
and  seating  himself  in  a  corner  would  imagine 
a  whole  play  from  the  title  and  list  of  characters. 

Hans  was  still  a  mere  lad  when  his  father 
died,  and  after  this  event  he  was  left  much  to 


152  HANS    CHRISTIAN    ANDERSEN. 

himself  while  his  mother  went  out  washing  in 
order  to  earn  their  living.  He  was  fond  of 
reading  plays,  and  the  more  tragic  they  were  the 
better.  From  reading  plays  he  soon  came  to 
writing  them  and  strange  affairs  they  must  have 
been.  His  first  piece  was  a  most  doleful  tragedy 
in  which  the  entire  dramatis  personcE  died  miser- 
ably. This  youthful  effusion  having  met  with 
adverse  criticism  from  a  neighbor  he  began  a 
new  piece  in  which  a  king  and  queen  figured. 
He  says  :  — 

"  I  thought  it  not  quite  right  that  these  dignified  per- 
sonages, as  in  Shakespeare,  should  speak  like  other  men 
and  women.  I  asked  my  mother  and  different  people 
how  a  king  ought  properly  to  speak,  but  no  one  knew 
exactly.  They  said  that  it  was  so  many  years  since  a  king 
had  been  in  Odense,  but  that  he  certainly  spoke  in  a 
foreign  language.  I  procured  myself,  therefore,  a  ^rt 
of  lexicon,  in  which  were  German,  French  and  English 
words  with  Danish  meanings,  and  this  helped  me.  I 
took  a  word  out  of  each  language,  and  inserted  them  into 
the  speeches  of  my  king  and  queen.  It  was  a  regular 
Babel-like  language,  which  I  considered  only  suitable  for 
such  elevated  personages.  I  desired  now  that  everybody 
should  hear  my  piece.     It  was  a  real  felicity  to  me  to 


HANS    CHRISTIAN    ANDERSEN.  1 53 

read  it  aloud,  and  it  never  occurred  to  me  that  others 
should  not  have  the  same  pleasure  in  listening  to  it." 

The  delight  which  the  boy  took  in  his  crude 
fancies  was  the  same  sort  of  pleasure,  with  com- 
paratively little  modification,  which  the  man 
afterwards  took  in  his  finished  work.  He  was 
in  some  respects  always  a  child,  and  he  retained 
to  the  last  the  simplicity  of  heart  which  charac- 
terized his  childhood  and  youth.  He  never 
grew  old  in  feeling,  but  remained  perennially 
young  at  heart.  In  the  opening  chapters  of 
The  Story  of  My  Life  we  get  many  glimpses  of 
his  childhood  as  well  as  the  continued  account 
of  his  later  years  ;  but  he  put  much  of  himself 
into  his  novels,  and  in  Only  a  Fiddler,  one  may 
read  the  story  of  his  longing  for  fame,  his  aspi- 
rations and  his  disappointments. 

He  was  twenty-three  when  his  first  work  of 
any  importance  appeared,  entitled  A  Pedestrian 
Journey  from  Hobnen's  Canal  to  Amack.  Hol- 
men's  Canal  is  one  of  the  principal  features  of 
Copenhagen,  and  Amack  or  Amager  is  an  island 


154  HANS   CHRISTIAN    ANDERSEN. 

connected  with  the  city  by  long  bridges,  so  the 
journey  in  question  was  not  a  long  one.  The 
book  which  is  mainly  in  rhyme  and  humorous 
in  character,  met  with  sudden  and  unexpected 
success  and  in  consequence  his  confidence  in 
his  own  powers  could  never  afterwards  be 
shaken.  In  1829  a  play  of  his  called  Love  on 
St.  Nicholas's  Tower  was  acted  with  great  suc- 
cess and  the  next  year  his  first  volume  of  poems 
appeared  and  became  immediately  popular.  It 
was  while  on  a  journey  through  the  Danish 
provinces  in  this  year  that  he  fell  in  love,  and 
of  this  event  we  are  told  in  the  Story  of  My  Life. 
His  love  was  not  returned  and  he  cherished  the 
memory  of  this,  his  only  love  episode,  throughout 
his  long  life.  In  his  next  volume  of  poems, 
Fancies  and  Sketches,  published  soon  after,  we 
find  many  traces  of  this  sorrow.  His  Skygge- 
billeder,  or  Shadow-Pictures,  was  his  next  book, 
a  volume  containing  an  account  of  his  travels 
in  the  Hartz  Mountains.  A  year  or  two  later,  in 
1834,  he  published  what  must  be  reckoned,  all 


HANS   CHRISTIAN    ANDERSEN.  155 

things  considered,  his  greatest  work,  the  famous 
Improwisatore.  It  is  rarely  that  a  man  of  one 
nationality  enters  so  completely  into  the  life  of 
another  people  as  does  Andersen  in  this  won- 
derful book.  Madame  de  Stael  ambitiously 
adds  to  her  Corinne  the  sub-title  "or  Italy," 
but  with  far  more  truth  might  it  be  added  to 
The  Improwisatore.  The  book  is  Italy,  North- 
man as  he  was  by  birth,  Andersen  was  Italian 
by  temperament,  and  the  fervor,  the  excitability, 
the  enthusiasm,  the  longing  to  impart  to  others 
the  details  of  one's  own  life  so  characteristic  of 
Italians,  and  to  a  less  extent  of  other  nations  of 
the  south  of  Europe,  were  part  of  his  very  nature. 
No  wonder,  then,  that  he  could  enter  so  fully 
into  the  heart  of  Italian  life  as  he  does  in  the 
brilliant  pages  of  the  wonderful  Improwisatore. 
It  was  the  grown-up  public  for  which  he  had 
written  up  to  this  time,  but  he  was  soon  to  gather 
about  him  another  and  much  more  extensive 
circle  of  readers,  the  children  of  Denmark  at 
first,  and  later  those  of  half  the  world.     It  was 


156  HANS    CHRISTIAN    ANDERSEN. 

for  these  that  he  wrote  in  1835  the  first  series 
of  his  Eventyr  or  Fairy  Tales  as  we  call  them. 
The  collection  thus  begun  he  added  to  from 
time  to  time  during  a  long  course  of  years.  No 
writer  of  his  time  has  surpassed  Andersen  in 
the  ability  to  gain  the  attention  of  children  by 
story-telling.  The  sweet  simplicity  of  these 
tales  never  fails  to  win  their  admiration.  Him- 
self as  guileless  as  a  little  child  he  saw  very 
clearly  into  child  nature  and  children  know  him 
for  one  of  themselves. 

Andersen's  pen  was  very  busy  in  these  first 
years  of  authorship  and,  indeed,  it  was  never 
long  idle.  In  1836  he  gave  to  the  world  his 
novel  called  O.  T.,  or  Life  in  Denmark,  as  no- 
table a  picture  of  Danish  life  and  customs  as 
The  Itnprowisatore.  The  letters  "  O.  T."  were 
formerly  branded  on  Danish  criminals,  and  are 
the  initials  of  the  Odense  Tughthuus,  or 
House  of  Correction.  In  the  same  year  his 
pastoral  drama,  Parting  and  Meeting,  was  acted 
on  the  stage  with  decided  approval  and  in  1837 


HANS   CHRISTIAN    ANDERSEN.  157 

was  published  his  novel  Otily  a  Fiddler.  With 
Andersen's  countrymen  this  is  probably  the 
most  popular  of  any  of  his  works  and  it  is 
quite  as  faithful  a  picture  of  Danish  life  as  O.  T. 
The  hero's  father  is  the  shoemaker  of  Odense, 
the  melancholy  father  of  Andersen  himself,  and 
the  trials  and  sufferings  of  the  talented  Fiddler 
are  drawn  from  events  in  Andersen's  own  life. 

In  1839  he  visited  Sweden,  and  in  his  auto- 
biography he  tells  us  in  an  artless  sort  of  way 
how  he  met  with  the  once  famous  but  now  neg- 
lected Miss  Bremer  on  board  a  steamboat  in, 
the  course  of  his  journey.  While  in  Sweden  he 
wrote  a  drama  called  T/ie  Mulatto  which  was  so 
warmly  applauded  by  the  Swedes  that  he  was 
invited  to  the  universit3--city  of  Lund,  where  the 
students  gave  him  a  great  banquet  and  a  sere- 
nade. A  Picture  Book  without  Pictures  was  his 
next  book,  and  in  1841  the  results  of  a  tour 
through  Italy  and  Greece  were  embodied  in  A 
Poet's  Bazaar,  a  book  which  met  with  greater 
favor  abroad  than  at  home.     In  1846  the  first 


158  HANS   CHRISTIAN   ANDERSEN. 

part  of  his  autobiography,  The  Story  of  My  Life, 
was  published,  at  subsequent  periods  continued 
to  1855,  and  then  to  the  close  of  1867.  In  this 
book  it  is  easy  enough  to  see  the  remarkable 
vanity  of  the  man,  but  with  this  inordinate  self- 
esteem  was  mingled  so  much  of  real  gentleness 
and  sweetness  of  temper  that  to  judge  harshly 
of  Andersen  because  of  his  vanity  becomes 
nearly  impossible.  Less  popular  than  his  other 
novels  was  the  one  entitled  The  Two  Baronesses, 
his  next  work,  but  it  is  very  well  worth  reading 
^or  its  pictures  of  Danish  life  and  its  masterly 
delineation  of  character.  In  185 1  Pictures  of 
Sweden  appeared  which  by  an  English  critic  has 
been  considered  as  his  most  delightful  work,  the 
autobiography  excepted.  It  is  certainly  a  fasci- 
nating book,  though  it  hardly  deserves  the  rank 
the  critic  mentioned  accords  it.  During  these 
years  he  was  continually  producing  dramas 
many  of  which  were  exceedingly  popular.  One 
of  these,  called  Ole  Lukoie,  was  a  sort  of  wonder- 
comedy  in  which  the  adventures  of  the  dream- 


Hans  christian  andersen.  159 

god,  who  figures  in  more  than  one  of  his  fairy 
tales,  were  narrated.  A  Poet's  Day  Dreams  was 
his  next  book.  This  appeared  in  1853  and  was 
followed  at  intervals  of  a  few  years  by  several 
collections  of  his  Wonder  Stories,  and  still  later 
came  the  results  of  a  Spanish  tour  called  In 
Spain. 

In  1873  his  health  began  to  fail  and  the  end 
seemed  not  far  ofif,  yet  he  partially  recovered 
and  was  seen  again  in  the  homes  where  he  was 
always  welcome.  At  last  these  visits  had  to  be 
given  up  because  his  strength  no  longer  admitted 
of  his  climbing  the  stairs  that  led  to  his  friends' 
apartments.  In  the  last  winter  of  his  life  a 
young  lad,  the  son  of  one  of  his  friends,  devoted 
himself  to  the  care  of  the  aged  poet  with  an 
almost  filial  affection.  When  the  weather  per- 
mitted he  would  take  him  out  for  a  daily  walk, 
sustaining  his  feeble  steps  and  guarding  him 
from  over-exertion  in  the  tenderest  manner,  and 
when  it  was  too  cold  for  this  the  boy  would  sit 
by  his  friend  cheering  him  with  his  bright  boyish 


l6o  HANS   CHRISTIAN    ANDERSEN. 

fancies  or  listening  to  some  fairy  tale  that  would 
never  be  written.  Young  Robert  Henriques  did 
in  his  own  person  what  all  young  people  whom 
the  dear  old  man  had  loved  and  written  for 
would  gladly  have  done  had  the  tender  privilege 
been  theirs. 

April  2,  1875,  was  his  seventieth  birthday  and 
deputations  came  from  all  parts  of  Denmark  to 
greet  him  on  that  day ;  he  was  presented  with  a 
copy  of  one  of  his  tales  in  thirty-two  languages, 
money  was  raised  to  erect  his  statue  in  Copen- 
hagen and  to  build  a  home  for  poor  children 
which  should  bear  his  name,  and  on  the  little 
house  in  Odense  where  he  was  born  was  placed 
a  tablet  with  his  name  and  the  date  of  his  birth. 
He  never  appeared  in  public  after  this  and  four 
months  later,  on  the  fourth  of  August,  1875,  he 
entered  into  rest. 

On  the  day  of  his  funeral  all  the  city  shops 
were  closed  and  Copenhagen  was  draped  in 
mourning.  The  Church  of  Our  Lady  was  filled 
with  those  who  had  loved  him.     On  the  coffin 


HANS   CHRISTIAN   ANDERSEN.  l6l 

were  heaped  flowers,  laurels  and  palms,  and 
near  it  stood  a  great  company  of  children  strew- 
ing flowers.  Close  by,  too,  stood  the  King  with 
his  eldest  son  and  Prince  John  of  Gliicksburg, 
bareheaded  and  in  their  regal  robes.  In  his 
simple,  artless  way  the  dead  poet  had  loved 
pomp  and  beauty  all  his  life  and  so  at  his  funeral 
all  the  magnificence  and  ceremony  that  he  would 
have  delighted  in  were  not  wanting.  Just  at  the 
hour  of  noon  the  great  organ  began  a  tender 
prelude  and  then  that  vast  company,  king  and 
peasant,  rich  and  poor,  sang  Andersen's  own 
hymn,  "  Like  to  the  Leaf  which  Falleth  from  the 
Tree."  Then  Dean  Rothe  recited  one  of  An- 
dersen's last  poems  and  spoke  earnestly  and 
tenderly  of  the  man  whom  all  Denmark  had 
delighted  to  honor  and  was  followed  by  the  aged 
bishop  of  Odense,  who  said  the  farewell  from 
the  birthplace  of  Andersen.  After  this  Carl 
Plough's  poem,  "Sleep,  Weary  Child,"  written 
for  the  occasion,  was  sung  and  Andersen's 
friend,  the  composer  Hartmann,  played  on  the 


l62  HANS    CHRISTIAN    ANDERSEN. 

organ  the  music  he  had  written  long  before  for 
the  funeral  of  Thorwaldsen.  As  the  music 
trembled  into  silence  people  from  all  parts  of 
the  church  went  up  to  the  chancel  and  laid 
wreaths  and  flowers  upon  the  coffin.  In  the 
centre  of  these  tributes  lay  a  palm  branch  and 
wreath  from  Odense,  the  city  of  his  birth,  the 
scene  of  his  early  struggles.  When  the  last 
wreath  had  been  brought  the  coffin  was  borne 
down  the  centre  aisle  by  a  number  of  students 
followed  by  the  various  delegations  from  all 
parts  of  Denmark  bearing  crape-bordered  ban- 
ners, and  a  long  procession  of  mourning  friends. 
All  along  the  route  to  the  cemetery  people  sat 
at  their  windows  clad  in  deep  mourning  and 
many  of  the  houses  and  all  the  shipping  in  the 
harbor  had  flags  at  half-mast.  As  the  proces- 
sion left  the  church  great  numbers  of  poor  peo- 
ple hastened  into  the  building  to  gather  the 
leaves  and  flowers  which  had  fallen  from  his 
coffin  and  even  the  smallest  leaf  was  lovingly 
cherished. 


HANS    CHRISTIAN    ANDERSEN.  163 

In  spite  of  his  love  for  splendor  and  show  he 
never  became  forgetful  of  his  own  poor  estate 
in  early  youth  or  ceased  to  have  the  warmest 
sympathy  with  the  humblest  person.  His  vanity, 
his  self-esteem  were  in  him  the  most  amiable  of 
foibles,  the  heart  beneath  was  one  of  the  tender- 
est  and  gentlest  that  ever  beat.  On  a  laurel 
wreath  from  Berlin  which  lay  upon  his  coffin 
was  fastened  this  inscription,  as  touching  as  it 
is  full  of  tender  truth  :  — 

"  Thou  art  not  dead,  though  thine  eyes  are  closed. 
In  children's  hearts  thou  shalt  live  forever." 


CHAPTER    X. 


DANIEL    DEFOE. 


IN  the  winter  of  1711-12  all  London  was  very 
busy  talking  about  a  certain  man  who  had 
recently  returned  from  a  voyage  to  the  Southern 
Seas.  At  the  coffee-houses  the  men  about  town 
conversed  of  him  with  Addison  and  Steele  and 
the  other  literary  men  of  the  day.  Fine  ladies 
in  their  sedan-chairs  going  to  and  from  the  play 
were  full  of  the  topic,  and  even  the  linkboys 
who  stood  without  the  doors  of  the  playhouse 
till  the  acting  should  be  over  discussed  it  with 
the  waiting  chairmen.  Hosts  of  people  visited 
the  sailor,  whose  name  was  Alexander  Selkirk, 
and  listened  to  his  account  of  the  solitary  life 
he  led  for  four  years  upon  the  island  of  Juan 
Fernandez.  After  a  time  several  accounts  of 
164 


DANIEL    DEFOE,  1 65 

Selkirk's  adventures  appeared  in  print,  then 
fresher  topics  came  to  the  surface  and  so  this 
nine  days  wonder  passed  from  mind. 

Several  attempts,  it  is  true,  were  made  to  use 
it  as  literary  material,  but  they  failed  and  it 
seemed  as  if  Selkirk  and  his  narrative  had  made 
no  lasting  impression  upon  the  age.  But  never- 
theless one  man  of  genius  had  kept  the  affair  in 
mind,  and  in  17 19  this  Selkirk  germ  flowered 
into  the  immortal  Robinson  Crusoe.  Its  author 
was  perhaps  the  one  man  of  his  time  who  could 
develop  such  a  tale  as  Robinson  Crusoe  from  the 
outline  furnished  by  Selkirk's  adventures.  He 
possessed  in  a  remarkable  degree  the  gift  of 
circumstantial  narration  —  the  power,  that  is,  of 
inventing  a  series  of  facts  which  shall  seem  per- 
fectly natural,  and  the  ability  to  throw  over  these 
facts,  no  matter  how  extraordinary  in  themselves, 
a  wonderful  air  of  reality.  Among  his  contem- 
poraries were  men  of  greater  gifts  than  he,  but 
no  one  but  Defoe,  it  is  safe  to  say,  could  at  that 
time  have  written  a  romance  like  this. 


1 66  DANIEL    DEFOE. 

It  is  not  a  very  clear  notion  that  we  get  of 
Daniel  Defoe  from  the  works  of  his  contempo- 
raries or  from  the  writers  of  our  own  day.  An 
accomplished  essayist  writing  thirty  years  ago 
calls  him  a  "model  of  integrity,"  and  a  more 
recent  writer  says,  "  He  was  a  great,  truly  great 
liar,  perhaps  the  greatest  liar  that  ever  lived." 
Of  these  two  estimates  the  latter  is  perhaps 
nearest  the  truth. 

He  was  born  in  London  in  1661,  the  son  of  a 
butcher  in  the  parish  of  Cripplegate,  named  Foe. 
When  he  was  about  forty  he  changed  his  signa- 
ture from  "  D.  Foe  "  to  "  Defoe,"  and  seems  after 
that  period  to  have  written  his  name  *'  Daniel 
De  Foe  "  or  "  Daniel  Defoe  "  as  it  pleased  him. 
In  1 73 1  he  died  in  Moorfields,  London,  accom- 
plishing in  his  life  of  seventy  years  a  vast  amount 
of  literary  work,  more  in  quantity  than  any  man 
of  his  time,  busy  as  some  of  them  were. 

The  list  of  his  writings  includes  two  hundred 
and  ten  works,  ranging  over  the  greatest  variety 
of  topics,  and  yet  authorship  was  by  no  means 


DANIEL   DEFOE. 


DANIEL    DEFOE.  169 

his  only  claim  to  notice  in  his  time.  "He  was 
an  active  politician  throughout  his  life  and  was 
manufacturer,  merchant  and  journalist  by  turns. 
He  was  originally  intended  for  the  ministry,  but 
after  completing  the  course  of  training  for  that 
purpose  abandoned  the  idea  of  that  profession, 
a  fortunate  decision,  for  his  talents,  however 
great,  were  not  those  best  fitted  for  exercise  in 
the  pulpit.  In  1685  he  became  a  hose  merchant, 
but  his  success  in  this  business  may  be  guessed 
from  the  fact  that  seven  years  later  he  was 
obliged  to  flee  from  his  creditors.  Tradition 
states  that  he  went  to  Bristol  and  was  there  called 
the  "  Sunday  Gentleman  "  from  his  appearing 
in  public  only  on  that  day,  for  fear  of  the  bailiffs 
kept  him  indoors  the  rest  of  the  week.  Later 
on  we  hear  of  him  in  various  occupations,  among 
others  that  of  the  manufacture  of  bricks,  and  it 
is  pleasant  to  read  that  he  labored  diligently  to 
pay  his  creditors. 

In    1697    his  first    important  work  was  pub- 
lished, entitled   An   Argument   Showing  that  a 


170  DANIEL    DEFOE. 

Standing  Army  with  Consent  of  Parliament  is  not 
Inconsistent  with  a  Free  Government.  The  title 
may  not  sound  attractive  to  us  now,  but  the  book 
was  very  effective  in  its  day,  and  is  a  marvel  of 
direct  and  vivacious  reasoning.  From  this  time 
forward  he  used  his  pen  vigorously  upon  all  the 
foremost  topics  of  the  period,  and  when  he  wrote 
The  True-Born  Englishman  he  became  suddenly 
famous.  It  appeared  near  the  end  of  King 
William's  reign,  at  a  time  when  the  king  was  ex- 
ceedingly unpopular  and  the  dislike  of  foreigners 
was  at  its  height.  Defoe  in  this  satire  declared 
that  no  such  thing  as  a  true-born  Englishman 
existed,  that  they  were  all  descended  from  for- 
eigners. One  would  naturally  imagine  a  turbu- 
lent London  mob  would  have  hung  the  audacious 
author  before  his  own  door.  But  they  did  noth- 
ing of  the  kind.  The  witty,  hard-hitting  strokes 
of  his  satire  tickled  the  English  sense  of  humor 
and  eighty  thousand  copies  of  the  pamphlet  were 
sold  in  London  streets.  A  still  more  famous 
political  work  of  his  entitled  The  Shortest  Way 


DANIEL    DEFOE.  I71 

with  Dissenters  appeared  in  1703.  Never  was  a 
jest  taken  so  seriously,  or  a  whole  nation  so  com- 
pletely "  sold  "  as  we  should  now  say.  In  this 
work  the  author  satirically  urged  that  if  all  per- 
sons attending  non-conformist  chapels  should  be 
banished  from  the  country,  and  all  non-conform- 
ist preachers  hanged,  the  evil  of  Dissent  would 
be  ended  forever.  Extreme  as  these  measures 
of  the  clever  writer  seem,  and  in  the  urging  of 
which  he  was  only  satirizing  the  intolerance  of 
churchmen,  they  for  a  time  much  delighted  the 
High  Churchmen ;  but  when  these  discovered 
that  they  had  been  tricked  their  rage  knew  no 
bounds.  For  a  time  Defoe  concealed  himself, 
but  that  the  printer  and  publisher  should  not 
suffer  in  his  stead  he  surrendered  himself.  The 
House  of  Commons  ordered  his  book  burned  by 
the  common  hangman,  and  at  his  trial  he  was 
condemned  to  pay  a  large  fine  to  the  Crown, 
to  stand  three  times  in  the  pillory,  be  imprisoned 
during  the  Queen's  good  pleasure,  and  find 
sureties  for  his  good  behavior  for  seven  years. 


172  DANIEL   DEFOE. 

In  the  State  of  Delaware  the  pillory  is  still 
occasionally  used,  and  one  may  sometimes  see 
there  a  culprit  undergoing  that  most  unpleasant 
kind  of  punishment.  But  the  shame  of  such  a 
punishment  lies  in  its  desert,  and  Defoe  had 
done  nothing  to  deserve  his  sentence.  For  three 
days  the  most  popular  Englishman  of  the  period 
stood  there  in  the  pillory  about  which  gathered 
the  multitude  who  covered  the  pillory  platform 
with  flowers,  while  barrels  of  ale  and  wine  were 
drunk  in  his  honor  by  his  enthusiastic  admirers. 
He  remained  in  prison  till  August,  1703;  but 
various  works  of  his  were  sent  to  the  press  from 
there,  and  the  time  was  by  no  means  lost.  It 
would  be  impossible  to  detail  here  a  tenth  part 
of  Defoe's  adventures.  His  restless  nature  was 
ever  impelling  him  into  controversy  and  intrigue. 
To  most  remarkable  powers  of  argument  and 
wonderful  skill  as  a  satirist  he  united  an  unscru- 
pulous disposition  and  a  confidence  in  his  ability 
to  extricate  himself  from  any  complications  into 
which  his  activity  might  plunge  him — a  con- 


DANIEL    DEFOE.  173 

fidence,  it  must  be  confessed,  not  unsupported 
by  experience. 

Our  modern  habit  of  close  investigation  is 
fast  disposing  of  the  literary  anecdotes  which 
are  often  told  in  connection  with  authors.  For 
instance,  it  used  to  be  asserted  that  a  certain 
London  bookseller  having  on  his  shelves  a  large 
number  of  copies  of  a  very  dull  book  by  Drelin- 
court,  called  The  Fear  of  Death,  induced  Defoe 
to  write  a  "  puff "  for  this  volume  and  that  the 
True  Relation  of  the  Apparition  of  One  Mrs.  Veal 
was  the  result,  and  that  77ie  Fear  of  Death  ac- 
cordingly rapidly  disappeared  from  the  book- 
seller's shop.  The  reason  for  the  sudden  de- 
mand for  the  book  consisted  in  the  fact  that  the 
ghostly  Mrs.  Veal  earnestly  recommended  the 
perusal  of  the  work.  Alas  for  the  facts  !  If 
the  inventor  of  this  tale  had  had  the  fear  of  lying 
before  his  eyes,  he  would  have  told  us  that  De- 
foe's book  was  first  published  without  any  refer- 
ence to  The  Fear  of  Death,  which  was  already 
popular  and  needed  no  "  puffing  "  of  this  sort. 


174  DANIEL    DEFOE. 

But  as  **  error  runs  a  mile  while  truth  is  putting 
on  his  boots  "  this  anecdote  is  likely  to  survive 
as  long  as  the  world  cares  to  listen  about  Defoe. 
And  that  will  be  for  centuries  to  come,  for  as 
the  author  of  Rolmison  Crusoe  his  hold  upon  the 
hearts  of  young  people  is  perhaps  greater  than 
that  of  any  other  writer. 

It  is  with  Defoe  that  the  art  of  novel-writing 
really  begins.  Fiction,  in  prose  at  least,  was 
new  to  the  world  then,  and  the  reading  public 
were  eager  to  read  Moll  Flanders^  Captain  Sin- 
gleton, and  the  other  romances  which  Defoe 
rapidly  gave  to  the  world.  It  is  not  easy  to 
think  of  a  period  when  people  found  themselves 
reading  novels  for  the  first  time.  The  sensa- 
tions of  a  child  old  enough  to  think  about  the 
matter  who  tastes  candy  for  the  first  time  in  his 
life  can  fitly  be  compared  to  the  feelings  of  the 
first  novel-readers.  These  books  of  Defoe's  are 
not  such  as  we  should  enjoy  now,  for  they  are 
coarse  in  tone  and  deal  with  customs  and  man- 
ners to  which  we  are  now  fortunately  strangers ; 


DANIEL    DEFOE.  175 

but  the}^  show  his  wonderful  power  of  story-tell- 
ing, a  power  which  reaches  its  height  in  Robin- 
son Crusoe. 

"  Homely  plain  writing,"  Defoe  termed  his 
style,  but  it  is  this  "homely"  directness  of  his 
that  constitutes  the  charm  of  Robinson  Crusoe. 
It  was  written  in  the  full  maturity  of  his  powers, 
for  he  was  fifty-eight  years  old  at  the  time,  and 
all  the  bent  of  his  life  was  such  as  to  fit  him  for 
this  sort  of  writing.  Few  men  could  make  fic- 
tion seem  more  like  fact  than  he.  His  whole 
career  was  such  as  to  create  a  general  belief 
that  he  was  untrustworthy ;  yet  he  could  pass 
himself  off  with  the  Tories  as  a  Tory,  and  with 
the  Whigs  as  a  Whig,  while  he  was  constantly 
appearing  before  the  public  in  assumed  charac- 
ters. Now  while  all  this  is  by  no  means  to  his 
credit,  it  does  show  his  inventive  spirit  in  a  very 
strong  light,  and  how  he  was  able  by  the  exer- 
cise of  this  faculty  to  throw  around  the  simple 
story  of  a  man  living  on  a  desert  island  such  a 
wonderful  air  of  reality.     When  we  read  Robin- 


176  DANIEL   DEFOE. 

soil  Crusoe  we  feel  that  the  hero  would  not  nat- 
urally have  acted  in  any  other  way  than  he 
actually  did.  And  it  is  this  fact  which  gives  its 
life  to  the  book.  Defoe  might  have  kept  his 
inventive  powers  in  their  place  and  never  have 
gained  his  reputation  for  untrustworthiness,  and 
still  have  given  Robinson  Crusoe  to  the  world  as 
perfect  as  it  is  now,  no  doubt,  but  we  must  look 
at  facts  as  they  are  and  not  as  we  should  wish 
them  to  be.  And  the  fact  is  that  this  immortal 
story-teller  was  a  man  to  whom  the  truth  was  a 
stranger.  He  was  seldom  straightforward.  He 
was  fertile  in  expedients  to  pass  off  falsehood  for 
truth,  and  it  is  this  gift  of  invention  which,  right- 
fully exercised  in  Robinson  Crusoe,  made,  when 
carried  into  actual  practice  in  life,  so  untrust- 
worthy a  character  as  his. 
Says  one  biographer :  — 

"If  he  is  judged  by  the  measures  that  he  labored  for, 
and  not  by  the  means  that  he  employed,  few  Englishmen 
have  lived  more  deserving  of  their  country's  gratitude. 
He  may  have  been  self-seeking  and  vain-glorious,  but  in 


DANIEL   DEFOE.  1 77 

his  political  life  self-seeking  and  vain-glory  were  elevated 
by  their  alliance  with  higher  and  wider  aims." 

And  with  this  judgment  we  leave  him,  remem- 
bering always  that  if  he  were  lacking  in  integrity 
of  purpose  he  could  nevertheless  serve  his  coun- 
trymen nobly,  and  that  in  spite  of  all  his  faults 
he  was  great  enough  to  write  for  his  time,  and 
for  all  time,  Robinson  Crusoe. 


CHAPTER  XI. 

LA    MOTTE    FOUQUE    "THE    VALIANT." 

SEVENTY  years  ago  one  of  the  most  popular 
names  in  German  literature  was  that  of  an 
author  whose  French  surname  strikes  one  some- 
what oddly  in  a  list  of  German  authors.  Once 
the  works  of  Friedrich  Heinrich  Karl  Fouque, 
Baron  de  la  Motte,  were  among  the  treasures  of 
every  German  household,  and  whenever  a  forth- 
coming volume  of  his  was  announced  the  libra- 
ries were  besieged  with  applications  for  it.  But 
long  before  his  death  the  high  tide  of  popularity 
had  subsided  and  with  it  ebbed  the  taste  for  the 
romantic  school  of  composition  of  which  he  was 
one  of  the  great  masters ;  yet  one  work  of  his 
has  become  a  classic  and  is  likely  to  live  on. 
Nearly  a  century  before  his  birth  the  revoca- 
178 


LA   MOTTE    FOUQUE    "THE   VALIANT,"       179 

tion  of  the  Edict  of  Nantes  had  driven  his  family 
from  France.  They  sought  refuge  in  Holland, 
and  Fouqud's  grandfather  having  entered  the 
Prussian  army,  the  family  became  citizens  of 
Prussia  at  a  later  period.  His  grandfather,  also 
named  Friedrich,  rose  to  distinction  in  the  Prus- 
sian service  and  was  honored  with  the  precarious 
friendship  of  Frederick  the  Great.  Being  a  person 
of  rare  prudence  he  succeeded  in  avoiding  all 
the  sunken  rocks  and  dangerous  shallows  in  the 
stream  of  courtly  favor  and  his  friendly  relations 
with  the  choleric  monarch  continued  unbroken 
throughout  his  life. 

His  son  entered  the  Prussian  service  likewise, 
at  one  time  being  an  officer  of  dragoons,  and  it 
was  while  he  was  living  at  Brandenburg  on  the 
Havel,  not  then  being  in  active  service,  that  his 
son  Friedrich  was  born,  on  the  twelfth  of  Febru- 
^^Y'  1777-  The  family  admiration  for  the  mon- 
arch was  so  great  that  the  child  was  named,  not 
unnaturally,  for  the  illustrious  emperor  who  stood 
sponsor  for  him  at  his  baptism.     His  earliest 


l8o      LA    MOTTE    FOUQUE    "THE   VALIANT." 

years  were  spent  on  his  father's  estate  at  Sacro, 
near  Potsdam,  and  later  at  Lentzke,  not  far 
distant.  He  was  an  only  child  and  much  pains 
was  taken  with  his  education  which  was  con- 
ducted at  home  under  various  tutors,  one  of 
whom,  the  author  August  Hiilse,  encouraged  in 
every  way  the  dawning  literary  tastes  of  the  boy. 

It  was  not  exactly  a  lonely  life  that  he  spent 
at  Lentzke,  but  it  seems  to  have  been  somewhat 
monotonous.  Still  there  were  certain  events  in 
it  to  look  forward  to,  or  to  recall  when  they 
were  once  past ;  for  his  holidays  were  almost 
always  spent  with  relatives  who  lived  in  a  de- 
lightfully romantic  old  castle  near  Halle,  a  cir- 
cumstance which  no  doubt  strengthened  his 
inborn  love  of  the  romantic  side  of  life  and  lit- 
erature. Sometimes,  too,  there  were  visits  to 
Potsdam  from  which  the  boy  would  return  wild 
with  enthusiasm  for  the  great  Frederick  whom 
he  had  seen  and  who  perhaps  had  given  him  a 
kind  word  or  two  or  patted  his  godson's  head. 

The  sound  of  military  music  and  the  sight  of 


LA    MOTTE    KOUQUE. 


LA    MOTTE    FOUQUE    "THE    VALIANT."       183 

the  soldiers  had  their  due  share  in  fostering  the 
military  spirit  in  this  son  and  grandson  of  a 
soldier  and  the  prospect  of  pursuing  the  study 
of  law  at  the  University  of  Halle  grew  less  and 
less  alluring.  At  last  he  gave  up  the  design  of 
doing  so  altogether,  and  in  1794  entered  the 
army  as  iibercompleter  Cornet  in  the  service  of 
the  Grand  Duke  of  Weimar,  and  when  only 
nineteen  served  in  the  fatal  campaign  of  the 
Rhine.  For  several  years  after  this  he  led  a 
semi-military  life  with  his  regiment,  but  was  not 
in  active  service. 

He  married  early,  but  the  marriage  was  not  a 
fortunate  one,  and  a  divorce  took  place.  In  1802, 
when  but  twenty-five,  he  married  again,  the  lady 
being  the  Frau  von  Rochow,  who  as  Caroline, 
Baroness  de  la  Motte  Fouque,  became  an  au- 
thor of  note  whose  books  still  find  a  place  in 
libraries. 

About  this  time  he  procured  his  discharge 
from  the  army  and  devoted  himself  to  a  literary 
career  which  was  to  last  for  forty  years.     His 


184      LA    MOTTE    FOUQUE   "THE   VALIANT." 

first  work,  Dramatische  Spiele,  was  published  by 
the  famous  brothers  Schlegel  in  1804.  The 
friendship  of  the  Schlegels,  particularly  that  of 
August  VVilhelm,  was  of  great  benefit  to  the 
young  writer.  By  the  latter  he  was  induced  to 
study  Spanish  poetry,  a  pursuit  quite  in  harmony 
with  Fouque's  romantic  vein.  This  initial  work 
was  soon  followed  by  Romanzen  aus  dem  Thai 
Ronceval,  the  first  fruits  of  the  Schlegel  influence, 
and  by  two  plays,  the  Falk  and  the  Reh.  Much 
encouraged  by  the  discriminating  praise  of  the 
Schlegels  Fouque  continued  vigorously  at  work, 
producing  in  1806  a  metrical  version  of  an  old 
prose  romance,  the  Historie  vom  edlem  Ritter 
Galmy,  and  the  poem  Schiller's  Todtenfeir  which 
latter.was  written  in  conjunction  with  Bernhardin. 
l\\  1808  came  the  romance  called  Alvin,  which 
brought  him  many  literary  admirers,  among 
whom  was  his  contemporary,  Jean  Paul  Richter, 
who  styled  him  '' Der  Tap/ere''  or  "The  Val- 
iant." In  the  same  year,  too,  was  published  his 
Sigurd  der  Schlangentodter,  the  first  of  his  books 


LA    MOTTE    FOUQUE    "THE    VALIANT,"        185 

appearing  with  his  name,  the  others  having  been 
published  under  the  pseudonym  "  Pellegrin." 
He  continued  writing  and  publishing  at  frequent 
intervals  up  to  the  year  1814,  when  among  other 
pieces  of  literary  work  he  produced  his  famous 
Jahreszciten^  a  series  in  four  parts,  the  spring  num- 
ber consisting  of  his  famous  romance  Uhdine,thQ 
summer  number  containing  Die  Beiden,  Haupt- 
leiite,  the  autumn  division  Aslauga's  Ritter  and 
Algin  und  Juamda  and  the  winter  division,  Sin- 
tram  und  seine  Gefdhrten. 

In  the  midst  of  this  active  literary  career  he 
had  in  18 13  returned  to  the  army  and  at  the  bat- 
tle of  Liizten  he  twice  narrowly  escaped  with  his 
life.  In  the  night  after  the  battle  he  was  en- 
trusted with  the  carrying  of  an  important  dis- 
patch and  while  in  the  discharge  of  this  duty 
his  horse  stumbled  in  deep  water  and  threw  him. 
From  this  accident  an  illness  resulted  which 
disabled  him  from  military  service.  He  accord- 
ingly received  an  honorable  discharge,  was  pre- 
sented with    the    decoration    of   the   "  Johann- 


l86       LA    MOTTE    FOUQUE    "THE    VALIANT." 

terorden  "  or  cross  of  the  Order  of  St.  John, 
and  was  raised  to  the  rank  of  major  of  cavalry. 
He  now  returned  to  his  home  at  Neunhausen 
with  his  wife  and  daughter,  and  once  more  re- 
sumed his  pen. 

The  list  of  his  works  published  after  this  date 
is  a  long  one,  but  they  are  quite  forgotten  now 
for  the  most  part,  and  slumber  quietly  on  library 
shelves.  In  183 1  his  wife  died  and  removing 
to  Halle  he  married  there  for  the  third  time. 
Here  his  last  years  were  peacefully  spent  in 
writing  and  in  lecturing  at  the  university  on  the 
history  of  poetry,  and  having  gone  to  Berlin  in 
1843  for  the  purpose  of  delivering  his  lectures 
in  that  city  as  well,  he  died  there  quite  sud- 
denly, January  23. 

His  was  a  well-filled  life,  but  the  highest  meas- 
ure of  his  achievement  was  reached  when  he 
was  yet  a  comparatively  young  writer,  when  in 
18 1 4  the  exquisite  romance  Undine  wzs  gxwen  to 
the  world.  The  same  year  witnessed  the  ap- 
pearance of  a  story  of  chivalry  which  Fouqud 


LA   MOTTE    FOUQUE    "THE    VALIANT."       187 

considered  one  of  his  most  successful  works, 
Die  Fahrten  Thiodolf  des  Islanders,  but  the  judg- 
ment of  posterity  has  not  confirmed  its  author's 
estimate.  Of  all  his  many  books  only  the  chiv- 
alric  romance  Der  Zauberring  published  in  i8i  i 
and  Jahreszaten,  which  contains  the  famous  Un- 
dineswWwQ.  These,  particularly  the  latter,  have 
weathered  the  fluctuations  of  popular  taste  and 
have  become  so  integral  a  part  of  the  literature 
and  the  thought  of  the  time  that  they  cannot 
readily  be  displaced.  And  after  all  only  the 
very  greatest  authors  go  down  to  posterity  with 
more  than  a  book  or  two  under  the  arm.  Some- 
times the  book  is  a  very  small  one,  sometimes 
it  is  reduced  to  a  few  pages,  a  single  leaf  even, 
but  the  literary  immortality  that  depends  upon 
but  a  single  leaf  is  often  as  sure  as  that  of  a 
Homer  or  a  Cicero. 

That  the  greater  part  of  Fouque's  work  was  so 
soon  consigned  to  neglect  was  owing  to  the  fact 
that  he  had  so  slight  a  hold  upon  the  life  of  his 
time.     He  was  not  a  deep  thinker  or  a  man  of 


l88      LA   MOTTE   FOUQUE   "THE   VALIANT." 

highly-wrought  feelings.  The  problems  of  mod- 
ern life  except  as  viewed  occasionally  from  a 
military  standpoint  had  little  attraction  for  him 
and  he  failed  to  grasp  them  in  any  adequate 
measure,  and  the  coldness  of  his  temperament 
effectually  prevented  him  from  putting  any  great 
amount  of  passion  into  his  romances.  The  ro- 
mantic school  of  literature  of  which,  following 
the  lead  of  the  brothers  Schlegel,  he  was  so 
eminent  a  representative,  appeals  mainly  to  the 
fancy  and  the  imagination  and  has  almost  no 
power  over  the  emotions.  The  distinguishing 
characteristic  of  Fouqud's  mind  seems  to  have 
been  the  attempt  to  present  an  ideal  of  Chris- 
tian knighthood.  In  some  form  or  other  this 
ideal  appears  uppermost  in  his  fancy  in  nearly 
all  his  works  reaching  his  apotheosis  in  Undine 
and  Aslauga^s  Ritter.  A  very  just  estimate  of 
his  character  in  this  respect  is  made  by  Carlyle 
who  says :  — 

"  A  pure,  sensitive  heart,  deeply  reverent  of  truth  and 
beauty  and  heroic  virtue,  a  quick  perception  of  certain 


LA   MOTTE    FOUQUE    "  THE   VALIANT."       1 89 

forms  embodying  these  high  qualities,  and  a  delicate  and 
dainty  hand  in  picturing  them  forth  are  gifts  which  few 
readers  of  his  works  will  contest  him.  At  the  same  time, 
it  must  be  granted,  he  has  no  preeminence,  either  of  head 
or  heart,  and  his  circle  of  activity,  though  full  of  ani- 
mation, is  far  from  comprehensive.  He  is,  as  it  were, 
possessed  by  one  idea.  A  few  notes,  some  of  them  in 
truth,  of  rich  melody,  yet  still  a  very  few,  include  the 
whole  music  of  his  being.  The  Chapel  and  the  Tilt-yard 
stand  in  the  background  or  the  foreground,  in  all  the 
scenes  of  his  universe.  He  gives  us  knights,  soft-hearted 
and  strong-armed ;  full  of  Christian  self-denial,  patience, 
meekness,  and  gay,  easy  daring  ;  they  stand  before  us  in 
their  mild  frankness,  with  suitable  equipment,  and  ac- 
companiment of  squire  and  dame,  and  frequently  the 
whole  has  a  true,  though  seldom  a  vigorous,  poetic  life. 
If  this  can  content  us,  it  is  well ;  if  not,  there  is  no  help ; 
for  change  of  scene  and  person  brings  little  change  of 
subject ;  even  when  no  chivalry  is  mentioned,  we  feel  too 
clearly  the  influence  of  its  unseen  presence.  Nor  can  it 
be  said  that  in  this  solitary  department  his  success  is  of 
the  very  highest  sort.  To  body  forth  the  spirit  of  Chris- 
tian knighthood  in  existing  poetic  forms,  to  wed  that  old 
sentiment  to  modern  thoughts  was  a  task  which  he  could 
not  attempt.  He  has  turned  rather  to  the  fictions  and 
machinery  of  former  days,  and  transplanted  his  heroes 
into  distant  ages  and  scenes  divided  by  their  nature  from 
our  common  world.  Their  manner  of  existence  comes 
imaged  back  to  us  faint  and  ineffectual,  like  the  crescent 
of  the  setting  moon. 


igo       LA    MOTTE    FOUQUE    "THE   VALIANT." 

These  things,  however,  are  not  faults,  but  the  want  of 
merits.  Where  something  is  effected,  it  were  ungracious 
to  reckon  up  too  narrowly  how  much  is  left  untried.  In 
all  his  writings  Fouque  shows  himself  as  a  man  deeply 
imbued  with  feelings  of  religion,  honor  and  brotherly 
love ;  he  sings  of  faith  and  affection  with  a  full  heart ; 
and  a  spirit  of  tenderness,  and  vestal  purity,  and  meek 
heroism  sheds  salutary  influences  from  his  presence. 
He  is  no  primate  or  bishop  in  the  Church  Poetical ;  but 
a  simple  chaplain,  who  merits  the  honors  of  a  small  TduI 
well-discharged  function,  and  claims  no  other." 

There  are  few  things  in  the  German  language 
more  beautiful  than  the  sweet  simplicity  of 
Fouqud's  style.  "  Exquisite  "  is  the  word  which 
must  be  used  to  describe  it  and  no  reader  of 
Undine  or  Aslaugd's  Ritter  will  care  to  apply  to 
it  any  other  term.  Its  airy  grace  is  inimitable. 
Says  one  of  his  critics, :  — 

"  Fouque  aimed  at  ethereal  beauty,  delighted  in  word- 
painting,  and  flitted  continually  between  the  glories  of  a 
crimson  Spanish  sunset  and  the  cold  steel-blue  of  a  north 
German  nightfall." 

Very  few  of  Fouqud's  writings  have  been  trans- 
lated into  English.     Undine  and  Sintram  have, 


LA    MOTTE    FOUQUE    "THE   VALIANT.  igi 

it  is  true,  and  more  than  once  ;  and  the  Zauber- 
ring  and  Aslatiga^s  Ritter  have  appeared  in  an 
English  dress ;  but  these  are  all  and  for  the 
reasons  alread)'^  named  it  is  not  likely  that  the 
list  of  translations  will  be  increased. 

Asiauga's  Ritter  has  found  fewer  readers  than 
Undine.  Aslauga,  it  will  be  remembered  by 
readers  of  the  Nibelungen  Lied.,  was  the  daughter 
of  Siegfried  and  Brynhild,  and  in  this  romance, 
long  after  she  had  ended  her  days  as  the  wife 
of  the  Danish  king  Ragnar  Lodbrog,  she  ap- 
pears to  the  Knight  P>oda  and  becomes  the 
inspiration  of  his  life.  A  passage  from  Car- 
lyle's  translation  of  the  tale  will  give  some  idea 
of  the  style  of  this  charming  romance  :  — 

"  But  Edwald  continued  dreaming,  dreaming ;  and 
many  other  visions  passed  before  him,  all  of  a  lovely  cast, 
though  he  could  not  recollect  them,  when  far  in  the  morn- 
ing he  opened  his  smiling  eyes.  Froda  and  his  mysteri- 
ous song  alone  stood  clear  before  his  memory.  He  now 
saw  well  that  his  friend  was  dead  but  he  sorrowed  not 
because  of  it  in  his  mind,  feeling  as  he  did,  that  the  pure 
heart  of  the  hero  and  singer  could  nowhere  find  its  proijer 
joy,  save  in  the   Land  of  Light,  in  blissful  communion 


192         LA    MOTTE    FOUQUE    "THE   VALIANT." 

with  the  high  spirits  of  the  ancient  time.  He  glided 
softly  from  his  sleeping  Hildegardis  into  the  chamber  of 
the  departed.  He  was  lying  on  his  bed  of  rest,  almost 
as  beautiful  as  he  had  looked  in  the  vision ;  and  the  gold 
helmet  on  his  head  was  entwisted  in  a  wondrous,  beam- 
ing lock  of  hair.  Then  Edwald  made  a  fair  shady  grave 
on  consecrated  ground,  summoned  the  castle  chaplain, 
and  with  his  help  interred  in  it  his  heroic  Froda."  * 


•  For  a  very  beautiful  version  of  the  story  of  Aslang,  the  reader 
must  turn  to  The  Fostering  of  Aslang  in  William  Morris's  Earthly 
Paradise. 


CHAPTER   XII. 

THE   AUTHOR    OF    "PAUL    AND    VIRGINIA." 

WHEN  by  chance  we  hear  the  name  of 
Elsinore  what  other  name  comes  at 
once  to  our  thoughts  like  an  echo  of  the  first  ? 
What  name  but  Hamlet !  With  Verona  are 
linked  forever  in  our  memories  the  names  of 
Juliet  and  Romeo.  Grand  Pre  and  Acadie  sum- 
mon recollections  of  Evangeline  and  Gabriel. 
Westward  of  Chili,  far  out  in  the  Pacific,  lies 
an  island  visited  by  few  but  familiarly  known 
the  world  over  because  along  its  sands  and 
through  its  woods  once  roamed  Robinson  Cru- 
soe. In  the  Indian  Ocean  lies  another  island, 
once  owning  allegiance  to  Holland,  then  to 
France,  and  now  to  England  —  the  island  of 
Mauritius  or  Isle  de  France,  which  is  dear  to 
193 


194   THE   AUTHOR   OF    "  PAUL   AND   VIRGINIA." 

hundreds  of  thousands  of  hearts  simply  because 
it  was  once  the  home  of  Paul  and  Virginia. 

Yet  none  of  these  people  had  ever  an  actual 
existence.  They  never  breathed  our  air,  never 
lived  and  never  died,  but  yet  they  are  more  real 
to  us  than  nine  tenths  of  the  people  we  meet 
upon  our  daily  walks,  more  real  than  those  whose 
names  crowd  the  pages  of  history.  And  they 
will  be  just  as  real,  just  as  actual  personalities 
far  down  the  centuries  to  come  as  they  are  to 
us  of  the  present  one.  They  are  part  of  our 
individual  life  and  they  are  part  of  the  world's 
life  also. 

Do  you  ask  why  this  is  so  ?  Simply  because 
these  men  and  women  stand  for  vital,  endur- 
ing facts  which  the  world  recognizes  as  such. 
Every  one  perceives  in  the  person  of  Hamlet 
the  struggle  that  is  eternally  going  on  in  souls 
that  acknowledge  a  duty  before  them  and  who 
lack  decision  of  character  to  perform  it  without 
hesitation.  Robinson  Crusoe  and  his  adven- 
tures represent  the   age-long  struggle  of  man 


JACQUES-HENRl-lihRNAKDlN    DE    ST.     PIERRE. 


THE   AUTHOR   OF    "  PAUL    AND    VIRGINIA."     I97 

with  circumstances.  Disappointed  and  unhappy 
but  ever-faithful  love  sees  itself  reflected  in  the 
story  of  the  Veronese  lovers,  or  those  of  Acadie, 
or  of  far-distant  Mauritius.  It  is  because  these 
people  of  the  imagination  in  one  sense  are  in 
another  sense  not  creatures  of  the  imagination 
at  all,  but  people  of  the  past  and  of  the  future 
as  well  as  of  the  present,  since  they  represent 
some  of  the  springs  of  action  in  human  char- 
acter, that  they  are  so  real  to  us.  They  do  exist 
as  truly  as  ever  Queen  Elizabeth  or  Cromwell 
did,  and  Elsinore,  Grand  Pr^,  Verona,  Juan 
Fernandez  and  Mauritius  are  not  more  real 
than  they. 

In  the  salon  of  Madame  Necker  in  Paris 
there  was  gathered  upon  one  occasion,  one  hun- 
dred years  ago,  a  brilliant  company  of  literary 
people  to  listen  to  the  reading  of  a  romance 
entitled  Paul  and  Virginia  by  the  author,  one 
Jacques-Henri-Bernardin  de  St.  Pierre.  As  the 
reading  proceeded  the  attention  of  the  listeners 
flagged,  some  of  them  whispered  to  each  other 


IqS    the   author   of    "PAUL   AND   VIRGINIA." 

and  looked  at  their  watches,  those  near  the  door 
stole  out,  and  one  or  two  either  went  to  sleep  or 
pretended  to  do  so.  Some  of  the  ladies  wept 
over  the  sorrowful  conclusion,  but  as  no  word 
of  praise  was  heard  at  the  end  of  the  reading 
they  did  not  dare  to  confess  that  they  had  been 
interested.  Who  can  blame  the  author  if  he 
left  the  salon  in  the  deepest  depression  believing 
that  his  literary  sentence-of-death  had  been 
pronounced  ? 

He  had  up  to  this  time  published  no  book, 
but  had  for  many  years  devoted  himself  to  the 
preparation  of  a  work  called  Arcadia^  and  it  is 
from  the  materials  gathered  for  this  that  The 
Studies  of  Nature,  Paul  and  Virginia  and  The 
Indian  Cottage  were  written.  But  the  result  of 
the  reading  at  Madame  Necker's  was  a  blow  to 
his  literary  ambition,  and  but  for  a  fortunate 
accident  Paul  and  Virginia,  incomparably  the 
best  of  his  works,  might  never  have  seen  the 
public  eye. 

Among  the  friends  of  St.  Pierre  was  Horace 


THE   AUTHOR    OF    "PAUL   AND    VIRGINIA."     I99 

Vernet,  the  celebrated  artist.  Visiting  his  friend 
one  day  in  the  humble  quarters  which  St.  Pierre 
then  occupied,  he  found  him  sunk  in  despair, 
for  the  disastrous  scene  at  Madame  Necker's 
was  never  out  of  his  mind.  Vernet  inquired 
the  cause  of  his  friend's  grief,  and  when  told 
asked  to  have  the  narrative  read  to  him.  That 
St.  Pierre  was  loth  to  undertake  a  second  read- 
ing of  the  unlucky  manuscript  can  well  be 
believed,  but  his  reluctance  yielded  to  the  other's 
persistence,  and  he  began,  Vernet's  mood  of 
critical  attention  soon  gave  way  to  one  of  un- 
restrained delight,  and  when  the  reading  was 
finished  he  rose  and  embraced  his  friend,  ex- 
claiming enthusiastically,  "  Happy  genius  !  you 
have  produced  a  chef-d'' oeuvre !  My  friend,  you 
are  a  great  painter  and  I  dare  promise  you  a 
splendid  reputation." 

The  effect  of  this  warm  praise  upon  St. 
Pierre's  drooping  spirits  was  to  give  him  confi- 
dence in  his  own  powers.  By  and  by  he  took 
courage  and  printed  his  Paul  and  Virginia  and 


200    THE   AUTHOR    OF    "  PAUL   AND   VIRGINIA." 

became  at  once  one  of  the  foremost  literary  men 
of  his  time.  He  had  been  long  in  winning  dis- 
tinction, but  it  was  substantial  fame  when  it 
came  at  last.  He  was  of  respectable  but  not 
noble  origin,  and  was  born  at  Havre  on  January 
19,  1737,  so  that  when  he  become  famous  he 
was  more  than  forty  years  old. 

As  a  boy  St.  Pierre  was  noted  for  his  affec- 
tionate, loving  disposition  and  his  fondness  for 
animals.  On  one  occasion  his  father  pointed 
out  to  him  the  lofty  towers  of  the  cathedral  of 
Rouen.  The  boy  gazed  earnestly  upwards  and 
his  father,  wishing  to  see  how  the  sight  would 
impress  a  child,  asked  what  he  thought  of  them. 
But  Henri  had  eyes  only  for  the  swallows  cir- 
cling round  the  spires,  and  exclaimed,  "J/^« 
Dieu!  qu'elles  volent  hautf"  "How  high  they 
fly !  "  —  a  reply  which  seems  greatly  to  have 
disappointed  his  father  who  looked  for  a  very 
different  response. 

A  prominent  trait  in  his  character  was  his 
impulse  always  to  side  with  the  oppressed,  and 


THE   AUTHOR    OF    "  PAUL   AND   VIRGINIA.       20I 

any  form  of  suffering  roused  his  sympathies 
instantly.  When  he  was  very  young  he  read 
with  eager  interest  the  Lives  of  the  Saints  and 
once  concluded  he  would  be  a  hermit  like  some 
of  the  saintly  heroes  of  whom  he  had  read. 
Accordingly  he  took  a  lunch  with  him  into  the 
woods,  expecting  as  soon  as  his  earthly  suste- 
nance was  exhausted  that  angels  would  appear 
with  further  supplies.  Evening  came,  but  not 
the  angels,  and  the  arrival  of  his  nurse  who 
found  him  asleep  at  the  foot  of  a  tree  cut  short 
an  experiment  that  might  have  sorely  tested 
his  faith. 

Something  of  this  same  simplicity  of  faith 
that  led  him  to  make  the  attempt  just  narrated 
remained  with  him  all  his  life.  In  a  century 
dominated  by  scepticism,  and  amongst  a  people 
who  held  their  religious  beliefs  very  lightly,  he 
was  conspicuous  for  the  depth  and  sincerity  of 
his  faith.  But  his  faith  was  of  the  heart  and 
not  of  the  head  ;  it  was  founded  upon  sentiment 
and  not  upon  reflection.     This  simplicity  and 


202    THE   AUTHOR    OF    "  PAUL    AND   VIRGINIA. 

singleness  of  intent,  however  admirable  in  itself, 
led  him  into  a  maze  of  contradictions  and 
absurdities  when  he  attempted  to  explain  the 
purposes  of  natural  phenomena.  He  asks  in 
one  place  in  his   Etudes  de  la  Nature :  — 

"  Why  do  some  trees  shed  their  leaves  and  others  do 
not  ?  It  is  difficult  to  explain  the  cause  but  easy  to  recog- 
nize the  purpose.  If  the  birch  and  the  larch  of  the  north 
cast  their  leaves  at  the  approach  of  winter,  it  is  to  furnish 
a  bedding  for  the  beasts  of  the  forests ;  and  if  the  cone- 
like fir-tree  preserves  its  foliage  all  the  year,  it  is  to  fur- 
nish the  same  beasts  with  shelter  amid  the  snows." 

Regarding  this  extraordinary  statement,  a 
critic  says  :  — 

"  Shelter  and  bedding  at  once,  it  is  evident,  would  have 
been  too  good  for  these  poor  animals ;  so  it  is  arranged 
that  their  bedding  shall  be  under  bare  trees,  and  shall  all 
be  covered  up  by  snow,  when  the  time  comes  for  them  to 
fly  to  the  hospitable  shelter  of  the  evergreens.  Again 
he  tells  us  that  the  reason  why  cocoanuts  grow  on  high 
trees  is  that  by  the  noise  of  their  fall  they  may  attract  the 
animals  whom  they  furnish  with  food.  It  apparently  did 
not  occur  to  him  that  the  cocoanut  on  the  ground  was 
quite  as  visible  an  object  as  the  acorn,  which  also  serves 


THE   AUTHOR   OF    "  PAUL   AND   VIRGINIA.        203 

various  animals  for  food,  and  yet  falls  without  noise. 
.  ,  It  makes  no  difference  to  M.  de  St.  Pierre  how 
many  different  constructions  any  established  order  of 
things  may  be  capable  of  bearing,  so  long  as  there  is  one 
out  of  them  all  that  suits  his  purpose  is  quite  enough  to 
prove  that  it  alone  is  the  true  interpretation  of  the  phe- 
nomena. Thus,  on  the  same  page,  he  tells  with  admira- 
tion how  some  trees  are  so  fenced  round  with  thorns  that 
the  birds  who  lodge  in  them  are  protected  from  all  at- 
tacks from  below,  and  how  other  trees,  that  are  fenced 
round  in  the  same  way,  have  long  rope-like  growths  de- 
pending from  their  branches,  so  that  monkeys  and  other 
animals  that  devour  birds'  eggs  can  climb  up  and  take 
the  citadel  by  surprise.  So  whether  the  birds  escape 
their  adversaries,  or  whether  they  fall  a  prey  to  them, 
there  is  equal  reason  to  admire  the  wonderful  designs  of 
the  Creator,  who  is  now  on  the  side  of  the  birds  and  now 
on  that  of  the  monkeys." 

The  unscientific  temper  of  his  mind  and  his 
inability  to  see  more  than  one  aspect  of  the  case 
at  a  time  of  course  renders  his  conclusions  of 
little  value  in  many  instances ;  but  his  disposi- 
tion to  see  good  in  everything,  though  carried 
by  him  to  illogical  extremes,  had  its  root  in  the 
best  principles  of  human  nature,  and  was  as 
conspicuous  in  his  childhood  as  in  his  later  years. 


204   THE   AUTHOR    OF    "  PAUL    AND    VIRGINIA. 

At  the  age  of  twelve  he  read  Robinson  Crusoe 
and  was  immediately  filled  with  a  wild  desire  to 
have  an  island  of  his  own  and  establish  a 
society.  As  years  went  on  this  desire  deepened. 
At  the  Jesuit  college  in  Caen,  at  Martinique, 
where  he  went  with  his  uncle,  as  a  lieutenant  in 
Germany,  and  at  Malta,  the  notion  was  still  in 
his  mind  and  at  the  age  of  twenty-six  he  set  out 
for  Russia  to  ask  Catherine  ii.  for  a  grant  of 
land  near  the  Caspian  Sea  where  he  might 
carry  out  his  theories.  But  as  might  have  been 
expected  he  received  no  encouragement  at  the 
Russian  Court  and  the  project  which  had  been 
so  long  cherished  was  at  length  reluctantly 
abandoned. 

At  the  age  of  thirty  he  returned  to  France, 
and  after  the  lapse  of  a  year  was  offered  the 
position  of  engineer  to  an  expedition  to  the 
Isle  of  France,  and  Madagascar,  which  he  ac- 
cepted. Always  ready  to  believe  the  best  of 
those  with  whom  he  came  in  contact  St.  Pierre 
gave  a  ready  ear  to  those  who  told  him  that  now 


THE   AUTHOR    OF    "  PAUL    AND    VIRGINIA."    205 

he  would  have  the  chance  to  carry  out  his 
benevolent  theories  in  founding  a  community  in 
Madagascar.  Hardly  had  the  expedition  sailed 
when  he  ascertained  that  it  was  practically  a 
slave-hunting  affair  and  the  people  concerned 
in  it  very  far  from  being  those  upon  whose  as- 
sistance he  could  count.  The  disappointment 
was  a  severe  one,  but  its  effects  were  lasting; 
he  indulged  in  no  more  dreams  of  founding 
Utopias.  He  left  his  uncongenial  companions 
when  he  reached  the  Isle  of  France  and  re- 
mained there  a  resident  of  the  island  for  more 
than  two  years.  During  this  time  he  devoted 
himself  to  the  study  of  natural  history,  and  pos- 
sibly the  outlines  of  the  story  of  Paul  and  Vir- 
ginia were  shaping  themselves  in  his  mind  during 
that  time.  Some  of  the  results  of  his  life  here 
were  made  public  on  his  return  to  his  native 
country  in  his  book  called  Voyage  to  the  Isle  of 
France.  It  met  with  some  attention  and  the 
Etudes  de  la  Nature  was  even  better  received  ; 
but  as  before  stated  it  was  the  publication  of 


2o6    THE   AUTHOR   OF    "PAUL   AND   VIRGINIA." 

Paul  and  Virginia  which  made  him  famous. 
The  world  at  once  reversed  the  contemptuous 
judgment  which  the  frequenters  of  the  Necker 
salon  had  passed  upon  the  tale,  and  at  the  end 
of  a  century  its  verdict  remains  practically  un- 
changed, 

A  striking  instance  of  St.  Pierre's  indepen- 
dence of  character  was  shown  in  1798  when  at 
a  meeting  of  the  Moral  Science  department  of 
the  Institut  he  appended  to  a  report  which  he 
read  before  it  a  strong  avowal  of  his  own  belief 
in  God.  Hardly  had  the  assembly  become 
aware  of  his  line  of  argument  when  the  mem- 
bers burst  forth  with  exclamations  of  rage  and 
derision.  Nearly  all  his  hearers  were  atheists, 
and  his  words  at  once  aroused  the  most  vehement 
opposition.  They  scoffed  at  his  age,  ridiculed 
what  they  called  his  superstition,  and  some  even 
challenged  him  to  a  duel.  Vainly  St.  Pierre 
endeavored  to  make  himself  heard,  and  at  last 
when  one  of  the  members  cried  out  "  I  swear 
there  is  no  God  and  I  demand  that  his  name 


THE    AUTHOR    OF    "  PAUL   AND   VIRGINIA."    207 

never  again  be  pronounced  within  these  walls  !  " 
he  retired  from  the  disorderly  assembly.  As  to 
the  fitness  of  time  and  place  for  making  his 
avowal,  there  is  room  for  difference  of  opinion ; 
but  in  regard  to  his  courage  and  independence 
in  so  doing  there  can  be  no  question. 

If  St.  Pierre's  earlier  years  were  full  of  vicis- 
situdes and  anxieties,  the  latter  half  of  his  life 
was  peaceful  and  happy.  Rather  late  in  life  he 
married  M'lle  Didot  and  became  the  father  of 
two  children  whom  he  named  Paul  and  Virginia. 
To  them  he  thus  tenderly  refers  in  his  Harmo- 
nies of  Nature :  — 

"  When  I  was  unmarried  and  when  I  published  the 
first  volume  of  my  Studies  of  Nature,  I  said  in  that  work, 
without  suspecting  that  there  would  be  any  truth  in  my 
prophecy,  that '  the  next  generation  would  in  some  respect 
belong  to  me.'  This  was  meant  to  apply  only  to  those 
improvements  in  education  with  which  I  was  then  occu- 
pied; but  I  have  had  my  wishes  fulfilled  in  other  respects, 
for  I  can  hardly  go  into  a  public  walk  without  hearing 
mothers  or  nurses,  brothers  or  sisters,  call  children  by 
the  name  of  Paul  and  Virginia.  I  often  turn  uncon- 
sciously around  and  imagine  for  the  moment  that  these 


2o8    THE    AUTHOR    OF    "  PAUL    AND    VIRGINIA." 

are  my  children,  for  I  also  have  a  Virginia  and  a  Paul, 
who  form  a  crown  of  roses  for  my  gray  hairs.  I  embrace 
accordingly  the  opportunity  of  using  their  names  with  the 
greater  pleasure,  as  it  will  enable  me  to  exhibit  a  sketch 
of  their  opening  dispositions.  My  Virginia  is  now  five 
years  old,  and  will  soon  become  capable  of  understanding 
such  lessons ;  my  Paul  is  an  infant  scarcely  twelve  months 
old,  but  he  discovers  the  mildest  disposition,  and  the 
warmest  affection  for  his  little  sister." 

Some  time  after  the  death  of  the  mother  of 
his  children,  St.  Pierre  married  again  and  this 
second  marriage  appears  to  have  been  as  fortu- 
nate as  the  first.  The  last  years  of  his  life 
seem  indeed  to  have  been  exceptionally  happy. 
His  young  wife  was  devoted  to  him,  in  his  chil- 
dren he  took  constant  delight,  and  the  income 
from  his  works,  to  which  a  Government  pension 
was  now  added,  enabled  him  to  live  at  ease  and 
minister  to  the  wants  of  others.  The  vexations 
and  trials  of  his  youth  were  now  far  in  the  past 
and  his  old  age  was  a  calm  and  peaceful  one. 
He  had  just  passed  his  seventy-eighth  birthday 
when  on  the  twenty-first  of  January,  1814,  his 
serene  old  age  was  merged  into  another  life. 


THE   AUTHOR    OF    "  PAUL   AND   VIRGINIA."    209 

We  may  smile  at  his  early  follies,  his  absurd- 
ities, his  simplicities,  but  it  is  a  kindly  smile,  a 
smile  where  no  trace  of  a  sneer  can  linger.  All 
his  long  life  he  retained  a  childlike  singleness  of 
temper  and  gentleness  and  when  the  final  sum- 
mons came,  "  Lo !  he  whose  heart  was  even  as 
a  little  child's,  answered  to  his  name  and  stood 
in  the  presence  of  the  Master." 


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